McLaren 12C vs the world - Part 2 (CAR archive, July 2011)

 By Ben Collins

CAR Features

31 August 2012 10:00

The weather at Rockingham  racetrack is perfect for this test of the titans: clear skies with a balmy track ambient to help tyres bite bitumen. As the sun beats down, poker-faced crews unload their darlings from immaculate trucks; stopwatches are fondled, new tyres pressured. Yet the way I drive on them, these tyres will be snuffed after two laps, leaving a short window to post a fast time and assess the ultimate performance of these supercars.

 I’m in the SLS first. With its hefty 6.2-litre engine mounted ahead of the driver, the rest of the machine revolves around it like Eeyore’s tail. The nose darts into corners swiftly, but the tail can’t match its poise and quickly falls into smoky slides. I dispense with second gear for tight corners altogether because it just spins the wheels into the rev limiter. Third’s as low as I need to go.

 In fact, avoiding gearshifts isn’t such a bad thing in the SLS: even though its dual-clutch gearbox is the same as the Ferrari 458’s, software programming means the shift is laboriously slow when you’re in a hurry.

The brakes have decent feel and good bite, though, so I run through the fast banking of Turn 1 at 100mph, accelerating up to 133mph before standing heavily on the pins for the sharp U-bend at the end of the straight. The big bird pulls up in time, but with more interference from the ABS than I expect. ‘Don’t try that again sunshine,’ it seems to say.

After a couple of laps of sloppy cornering I post a best of 1min 33sec. Time to switch to something more agile.

The Lamborghini Performante and the Audi R8 both share the same V10 and common running gear. But boy do they feel different. I take the Lambo first, ripping from the pitlane to the tune of its rich, extravagant roar that’s punctuated by staccato barks with each brutal gearshift.

The only way to drive this Lambo fast is to hurl it into corners hard, then smash the throttle pedal to the floor. Do this and you’ll bypass the understeer and fast forward straight to the most adorable four-wheel drift. Crucially, the drivetrain is also flexible enough on the limit to allow you to scrabble into corners with both front and rear axles skidding – rare in a four-wheel drive.

The Pirelli Corsas (Pirelli’s competition-grade rubbers) are strong enough to make the most of the Lambo’s stiff suspension, but they’re taking a serious pounding here. I push and push and push until finally I feel the times falling away and pit to save the tyres. The time? An impressive 1min 29.9sec.

Driving a Lamborghini by the scruff of its neck is not for the faint hearted and the Audi R8 provides the everyday antidote. But, wearing standard Pirelli P Zeros and weighing around 100kg more, it’s already on the back foot when it comes to hot laps. So I’m surprised when it all starts to click: the Audi is easier to drive because its all-wheel drive is more rear-biased than the Performante and its suspension settings are slightly softer; the transition of weight into corners is totally predictable and allows me to feather the throttle on my own terms, rather than driving like a hooligan; the steel brakes bite instantly, unlike some carbon discs which need heat to wake up; the chrome gearbox gate takes some getting used to, but it gives the R8 character. Best of all, there’s no rolling across the front tyres like there is in the Lambo, and it’s more planted at high speed too.

But even after a great drive, I’m still astonished that the Audi is only 1sec slower than the Lambo, and matches its sibling’s 135mph peak speed.
Now for the one I’ve been building up to: the fearsome Porsche GT2 RS. It’s running Michelin’s  Cup, a suitable shoe for what is in essence a racing car. Porsche has done a fine job of nearly eliminating the GT2’s rear roll endemic from its rear-mounted engine, but it’s replaced the cougar in the passenger seat with a pair of spitting king cobras. The turbos on this thing...

Laying down the staggering 516ft of torque without killing yourself takes some focus. The power surges through the rear wheels so viciously that I have to apply the throttle in four stages on the exit of every corner: once to create some movement in the rear axle, followed by a cautious increase, then I ride the surging boost before finally pinning  the throttle to the metal, hanging on and jabbing opposite lock. I absolutely f***ing love this car.

Fire round the track in the Porsche and every bump and change in camber clangs through your fillings, yet that hard suspension works wonders in the superfast Turn 1 to yield a 139mph top speed and 1min 28.8sec lap.

Can Ferrari or McLaren topple that? Right now it feels unlikely, but the 458 has the perfect balance of support and suppleness. Like Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder it seems to ride on a cushion of air that allows the chassis to move into each wheel – not too much, just enough for the driver to feel every dynamic element of each and every corner.

The mid-mounted engine means that all the movement revolves around the driver. You feel connected and important at the centre of gravity. As the back end squirms, you increase the throttle and expect to find the limit. But the car takes more. The E-diff alters the power delivery across the rear axle, compensates for the loss of traction, allows you to push further, harder.

The Ferrari lets you sense everything and responds to your every input. The slightest crack of the throttle changes its pitch, making it so driveable you could balance an egg on the end of your toe. Then there’s the bellowing V8, the seamless gearshift, the fantastic brakes and unintrusive ABS… but what I love most about the 458 is that when you really overcook your entry speed, it doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It just puts you back on line with only a modicum of driver input. That it beats everything that’s gone before with a 1min 28.3sec is the icing on the cake.

The 458 handles better than any supercar I have driven, and differently to any supercar I have ever driven – until now.

During the Cold War the Americans stole Russian MiG fighter jets in order to assimilate their successful traits for aerial combat. When I set out in the McLaren, it feels as if this car is designed to stand toe-to-toe with the 458 the way the F-16 once took it to the Ruskies.

McLaren insists that I drive the 12C with traction control on, albeit on its most reduced track setting, but I fight the computer from the first corner. Every time I accelerate and get some yaw into the chassis, the TC cuts power and a series of jarring wiggles ensues. The 12c’s brakes are sensitive and powerful, but the ABS is inconsistent and intrusive. It cuts in too much, giving me lurid close-ups of the gravel run-off areas because it overly reduces my braking effort.

However, the turn-in is crisp and utterly refined and something special happens mid-corner too, where the chassis really hooks up and beckons me in for more. Shame that in high-speed turns the 12C is more edgy and quickly chewed through its P Zeros. And we’re all shocked that my best efforts yield only a 1min 30sec – not only 1.7sec slower than the Ferrari, but slower than the Porsche and Lambo too.
And then the controversy really starts. I drive into the pits and an alarm bings as a message pops up on the dash saying that the hydraulic system that controls roll requires attention. I pull up and a puddle of hydraulic oil seeps onto the Tarmac. McLaren’s mechanics swarm around, hoiking the car up on a jack, pulling off wheels, burning forearms on scolding carbon discs as they frantically try to remedy the problem. It could be terminal they say, not sure if we can fix it.

Was the car broken when I lapped it? I don’t think so – the problem was the intrusive traction control. But after half an hour of faffing and flapping, the McLaren boys are back. They’ll let us do a lap with the traction control off, but there’s a catch: we’ll also be lapping on the optional, stickier Pirelli Corsas, not the regular P Zeros.

With no interference from the stability systems and unbridled control of the engine I discover this is the sweetest road-going turbo I’ve driven. The lag is brilliantly managed so you can fine-tune the throttle through corners, although it’s not on a par with the 458’s non-turbo V8.

The 12C mirrors the ‘cushion of air’ sensation of the Ferrari, as well as its mid-mounted poise, but the chassis response is faster and it’s beautifully balanced through the stop and go sweepers of Rockingham’s infield.

Does it knock the 458 off its perch? No, but it’s close. There are too many agents at play between driver and function for the McLaren to outshine the immediacy of the Ferrari. It can outpace the Ferrari in a straight line, but weirdly the Fezza just feels faster. And even with those stickier tyres, all I can summon is a 1min 29.2sec – still the best part of a second off the Ferrari.
But for once lap times mean nothing to me – I simply prefer the 458 because it’s purer and, ironically, closer in spirit to the McLaren F1.

Ben Barry delivers the final CAR verdict:

You have to feel sorry for McLaren – the hydraulic leak in the suspension that caused the 12C to be so much slower than the 458 was unfortunate. Still, a lap time is only one element of what decides our final ranking, and this misstep doesn’t alter our verdict, as the car we drove on the road – where, ultimately, it matters most – was perfectly representative.

Choosing a last place is always tough when you’ve got an amazing selection of cars, but this time it’s the Merc SLS languishing in sixth. It’s a very nice thing to live with and has a character and style all of its own, but it’s dynamically outclassed by everything else, plus the R8 is just as capable as a GT.

Fifth goes to the Lambo. If you want undiluted supercar thrills, the Performante is for you. But none of its strengths can disguise the fact it’s getting on a bit and becomes tiresome when you’re not in the mood. The Audi R8 edges it because it’s both thrilling to drive and easy to live with. It’s also a bargain in this company.

Now it gets tricky. I could justify handing gold to the Porsche, because it’s so exciting, and actually pretty easy to live with in the right conditions. But there are two rather contradictory caveats: the tyres don’t work in the wet, and our car had no air-con. There’ll be times when you wouldn’t want anything else, and times when you’d want anything but the GT2 RS. If you’ve got a garage full of cars, maybe that’s not such a problem, but here it’s third best.

There are all sorts of ways in which McLaren bests Ferrari, particularly composure through fast turns, ride quality and outright speed.

Yet the 12C’s all-round polish can’t compensate for the fact that the Ferrari is the more engaging, more interactive, more compelling machine to drive hard, and if your supercar is going to tick any box, it’s a good idea to prioritise that over everything else.

The Ferrari lifts your spirits in the way the McLaren can’t, and, you know what, a 458 isn’t such a chore to live with. We’d have never predicted but… Ferrari beats McLaren.

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Cannonball Re-run part 2 (CAR archive, February 2011)

By Matt Jones

Memory Lane

17 August 2012 09:00

Welcome to Part 2 of CAR's Cannonball Re-run from the 2011 archive. If you want to remind yourself of Part 1, please click here.

Waking up behind the wheel at 110mph is not a moment to treasure. Especially when Brock Yates Jr – veteran of outlaw road race, the Cannonball Run, and son of its founder – is shouting ‘TRUCK’ directly into your ear. Less still when there’s a very large lorry a very short distance away from the very expensive car you’ve borrowed. Still unsure as to whether or not this is a cruel dream, I freeze, drawing closer and closer to the back of the big rig. Brock grabs the wheel, the tyres squeal as he heaves the car into the outside lane of Interstate 70 and my heart leaps into my mouth, bumping into the word ‘f*ck’, which is on its way out. Definitely not a dream, then.

We swerve around the 18-wheeler. Brock takes his hands off the wheel and says: ‘Y’alright?’. ‘Err, yeah. Sorry about that. I was a bit, umm…’ ‘Asleep?’ he offers. ‘Yeah,’ I reply. Jr cackles, ‘Jesus. We should probably switch drivers.’

My stomach makes unsavoury noises until we reach the rest stop, four-odd miles from the near-death truck incident. Brock leaps out of the passenger seat with surprising composure and, after taking a deep-lunged breath and lighting a Marlboro red, says: ‘Cannonball’s as much about endurance as driving fast – you hit 100 and it soon feels normal, so you speed up to wake up. One ten, 120, 130 – when you’re double over the limit and it starts to feel slow, you’ve got to switch drivers.’

I tumble out from the helm making old-man harrumphs. Exhausted and inadequate, I fold myself behind the front seats, feng-shui the litter and half-used snacks left by photographer, Mark Bramley – who’s just woken up and been ejected from his back-seat digs – and pass out. The rest of the crew find their seat and follow suit.

This is the latest palpitation in a trans-American epic that’s already consumed 1418 miles, $311 in fuel, 29,000 calories and $100 dollars in terrorism fines (long story – see the January issue). Why? To celebrate 40 years of the notorious no-rules Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash road race from New York to Los Angeles. Brock Yates Jr has agreed to guide us across country and our next stop is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indy 500, to meet one the event’s most infamous competitors, Steve ‘Yogi’ Behr and 1971, ’72 and ’75 veteran Brad Niemcek. But first we’ve got to get through the night.

It’s still dark when the Challenger’s V8 wakes me up. With a voice like a zip, I ask: ‘How long ’till we get to Indy?’ ‘Depends,’ says Brock, ‘D’you wanna run hard?’ Save for narcolepsy, which I’m fairly sure he doesn’t suffer from, I can see ?  no good reason why not. Jr cackles, kicks down the Dodge and the familiar pause-mentalthrust-100mph follows. I doze, occasionally pawing the back of the driver’s seat to check there’s not a steering wheel there.

Just outside Dayton, Ohio, Bramley starts shouting, waking me up. ‘Cops, cops, cops!’ The radar detector, which sounds like an angle grinder at 6am, is making lots of its wretched noise, Brock’s slamming on the brakes and I’m straining to see what the snapper’s pointing at. Then it appears – a first-hand vision I’ve been dreaming of since I wore out my VHS copy of Smokey and the Bandit – a police car in the opposite lane passes the Challenger, clocks our speed, immediately switches on its lights and hurls itself through 180 degrees across the median towards us. I squeak involuntarily. This. Is. Awesome.

Brock seems utterly unphased by the cop’s interest. ‘I’m getting off at this junction. Strategic gas stop, anyone?’ He kicks it down, weaves between the commuters, shoots up the off ramp and pulls into a convenient service station. ‘Well, that was exciting,’ says Brock with a grin. We gas up and slot the remaining 70 miles to the small restaurant where we’ve agreed to meet the ex-Cannonballers into 50 minutes.

On arrival, Steve ‘Yogi’ Behr sidesteps traditional greetings. ‘Why the hell d’you get a car in arrest-me red?’ Tall, slight and dressed in a bright blue cookie monster T-shirt, 1971, ’72, ’75 and ’79 veteran Steve is exactly who you’d imagine being attracted to the Cannonball, with the sort of charmingly barbaric personality only America could nurture. With a slight southern drawl, he says, ‘I really hung it out in the Cannonball – I had a couple of driving licences, wasn’t doin’ much and I thought it’d be kinda fun to win it, which I did in 1972. I ran with some kids in a drive-away [manufacturer delivery scheme] ’73 Cadillac Coupe DeVille and man, we pushed it. When we stopped for fuel I’d have the gas hose pumpin’ in one hand and my hose in the other, then I’d toss ten bucks on the ground and leave. That little trick saved us more than a minute – we won by less.’

Three-time Cannonball vet and member of semi-spoof Polish Racing Drivers of America member, Brad Niemcek, winces. ‘Jesus, Yogi.’ Very much the yin to Steve’s yang, Brad is a softly spoken, well-dressed ex-PR exec, who retired to Wisconsin, where he pursues his incongruous interest in beekeeping and maple syrup. ‘I’m not concerned with going fast anymore, but I’m delighted that I used to be. Especially in that van.’

Brad, along with fellow PRDA members Oscar Koveleski and Tony Adamowicz, used a hopped-up Chevrolet Sportvan fitted with five 55-gallon drums of fuel. ‘The plan was to run without stopping. Of course, it didn’t work,’ says Niemcek. That thing was full of neat stuff, though. Our sponsor, Brigg’s Chevrolet, was run by Danny Zack who used to take a two-car racing team to LeMans. When he put our van together, he fitted the rear-end gears developed for the 2.3-mile Mulsanne straight, which were allegedly capable of giving his racing ’Vettes near-200mph top speeds. One time in San Bernardino County on a long downhill stretch we worked out that the van was going 128mph – either way, it was goddamn fast.’

As Brad talks, Steve’s defacing a Cannonball sticker, given to him by Brock, with a thick marker pen, adding an S and tucking it into his stonewash jeans. Brad laughs, shaking his head. Steve says: ‘I tell you boys what – it weren’t all fun on the Cannonball. I know you’ve got your own country club cross-country thing goin’ on, but when you’re runnin’ straight coast-to-coast it gets hard. The CB noise and constant pressure to drive fast but not break the car gets into your psyche, man. It’s real stress.’

Brad adds: ‘Yeah, it’s not all fun. Steve Durst, my co-pilot in ’72, wore white jeans, and by the end of the drive his thighs were black where he’d been rubbing them anxiously. Still, though – I kept coming back for more.’ Steve adds: ‘God yes. I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, but damn – I hope it’s something like the Cannonball.’

Following our appointment and thorough exploration of the diner’s breakfast menu, we leave Indy wholly nourished and continue along the I70 towards Kansas City, eight hours away. Mark sets cruise control to 95mph, Brock spots for cops and I try everything to get to sleep, failing dimly – even when they’re not making any noise, I can hear the radar detector and CB with searing clarity. It’s not just Yogi that suffered noise fatigue. Barely sentient but very much awake, I cock my head, look out onto the plain of bonnet and lifelessly consume mileage until we reach Kansas. We collapse in keenly priced digs after 36 hours without proper sleep.

After 12 hours of desperately necessary rest, we plan the following day’s route over breakfast muffins that look like they’ve been sick on themselves. ‘We gotta avoid R10 and R40,’ says Brock. ‘A lot of drugs come in from Mexico down there and the police are red-hot on speeding. If you look conspicuous and you’re going fast, you’ll get in a lot of shit very quickly – we look conspicuous. Let’s drop down after Denver and take the Barstow cut-off to Vegas; my dad used that route in ’71.’ The reasoning sounds brilliantly theatrical. I concur with a gruff ‘uh-huh’ in a poor attempt to mask my excitement.

Brock joins the I70, levering off gravity with the Challenger’s 400lb ft-strong supply of torque. Within minutes we’re on the receiving end of more CB compliments. ‘Shit, son – that’s one helluva ride.’ I can’t resist grabbing the microphone, adopt an appalling American accent and replying, ‘Thankya, good buddy.’ Stony silence. Brock starts laughing. The CB crackles again, ‘We don’t say that around here.’ Brock’s in hysterics. ‘You realise you just called him gay, right?’ Umm, no. I did not. ‘When you say “good buddy” to a trucker it sorta means you want to hook up with him.’ How awkward. I suggest we pick up the pace a bit. Brock chuckles and Bramley cries with laughter, while the speedo nudges 100mph.

Putting a safe distance between the Challenger and the strange man I accidently offered myself to, we pull in to a beautifully desolate, unmanned gas stop, situated a few yards away from a deserted motel complex. Brock and Bramley navigate the lavatories, I try Yogi’s trick instead. Not as easy as it sounds.

Gassed up, I quickly realise that Kansas offers little visual sustenance, just endless cornfields. Brock suggests speeding to pass the time. One ten, 120, 125… My palms start sweating. Lucky I’m not wearing white jeans. Brock says, ‘Competitors used to drive like this for 36 straight hours. It’s unbelievable.’ The CB crackles. ‘D’you see that Challenger movin’?!’ The games up. Brock advises. ‘The cruisers will have heard that. Dip in the slow lane and relax for a while. We’re getting bad press.’   

Bramley’s up next and Brock talks him through the speeding fine structure. ‘Fifteen over’s quite expensive, 20 over’s really expensive and beyond 100mph it gets uncomfortable.’

Despite tethered speeds, we make Denver ahead of schedule. Brock hunts for steak while Bramley and I take the car into the intricate network of empty mountain roads to experiment with adhesion. He concludes it grips lots, then not at all. After despatching 2mm of tyre tread, we ? return to the downbeat motel, sleep, wake up and get back on the road, bobbing through Colorado’s breathtaking peaks at a respectable pace until the mountains dissolve in the rear-view.

We dive off I70 onto the two-lane R191 towards Moab, Utah. We’re in Marlboro country. And out of petrol. Brock reliably informs me that we sailed past a sign stating there was no fuel for 40 miles. Buttocks are clenched, speed reduced and some hasty mathematics suggest that if we can up our current 24mpg we stand a chance of arriving under our own steam. We roll into town an hour later, on fumes.

At the gas station, Brock says: ‘Wait a coupla miles ’till it gets quiet and we really test the Dodge. It’s a traditional high-speed haunt for Cannonballers. In ’71 Dan Gurney did 50 miles straight at 130mph. He got caught, mind. No arrest, though. Lucky guy.’
After 20 minutes, the topography collapses inwards like an enormous failed meringue. ‘This is it…’ says Brock. ‘Speed Limit Enforced By Aircraft’ signs throw themselves behind us. Bramley opens the sunroof. ‘I’ll check for planes. Gun it.’ I kick down the car at 75mph and it charges to its 155mph limit with psychotic determination. Sweating drops of super-condensed fear, I’m tittering with nervous, inappropriate delight. Mark’s scanning the sky, occasionally leaning over to check the sat-nav’s speedometer. The Challenger’s in Sport mode – stiffened damping barely keeps my organs internal – but it feels composed and unphased. Me, less so. It’s the only time I see Brock asleep.

Steaming past minuscule Native American settlements, dead livestock and Monument Valley on R193, we dip off the freeway. ‘Best keep a low profile – let’s change roads,’ suggests Brock. Off R60 we swerve onto the 98, then the 89 towards R15 and Las Vegas. Temptation to explore a gas station advertising Lotto, Ammo, Guns, Beer gets the better of us. We entertain the idea of buying pistols, think better of it and forge forth.

On the I18 we’re driving at a civilised 90 when something big, red and mobile  looms into view. It’s a Dodge Viper on Quebec plates, with another close behind. Gesticulations of mutual appreciation follow, the driver wags his finger forward, drops a gear and lunges ahead. The grey Viper follows, waving me to join in. I follow.

Simultaneously, we realise we’ve not booked the evening’s accommodation. Brock’s nominated to make the call – I’m busy street racing and Bramley’s dangling precariously out of the window taking pictures and constantly demanding I get closer to the Vipers. With wind noise borderline intolerable, Mark continuously shouting and Brock gently asking if they have anything cheaper, I’m forced to laugh at this preposterous situation. Having hung up, Brock cackles, leaning ??forward ‘It doesn’t get more Cannonball than this, fellas.’

A night of semi-reckless spending’s followed by an easy drive into LA. Despite lengthy warnings about speeding in the city, Brock betrays his own propaganda to reach our final appointments with Tony Adamowicz and American racing hero, Dan Gurney. Both brim with anecdotes, but our eagerness to cross the finish line is palpable. Farewells are exchanged and, after consuming a truly joy-withering burger, we charge towards the Portofino Inn – Cannonball’s original finish line.

The ocean occasionally peers through LA’s vastness, and it’s only then that I visualise the full scale of our trip from sea to shining sea. We’ve driven across a continent. Really bloody fast.

Like all of the Cannonball vets we’ve met, the neon-lit Portofino sign is delightfully unassuming. We pull up, stop and stretch while Brock prods lazily at the clod of bills in his pocket. ‘Beer?’ God yes. He finishes his drink and offers a summation with such neat edges I struggle to think of a better conclusion to our trip. ‘If only for a few days, we paid a damn good tribute to the Cannonball, and America’s unfettered open road.’

EPILOGUE

Our adventure spanned 4126 miles, 13 states, six days and 161 gallons of increasingly expensive premium fuel. The car, a Moparised Dodge Challenger, performed with remarkable poise and, despite its humble 300C underwear, won us hundreds of CB and face-to-face compliments. Admittedly, there were several new, voluble rattles when we delivered the car back to LAX airport. But its ability to carry three amply proportioned men in relative comfort, deploy its Herculean thrust and drink fuel should never be underestimated.

Combined with Brock Yates Jr’s substantial contacts book, it also afforded us opportunities to meet people who took part in and created the Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash – unquestionably, the world’s most notorious outlaw road race. CAR’s sincerest thanks go to Brock for his assistance in assembling and realising this shambolic journey.

 

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McLaren MP4-12C versus the world (CAR Magazine archive, July 2011)

By Ben Oliver

Memory Lane

23 August 2012 15:08

It’s the group test to end all group tests: McLaren 12C versus Ferrari 458 versus every other supercar that matters. Can anything overwhelm the mighty McLaren? Three days on road and track should settle it once and for all.

So, this is IT, the big one. In a layby on an empty Welsh road linking nowhere in particular to somewhere else altogether sit a McLaren MP4-12C and Ferrari 458 Italia. Both cars are brimmed with superplus, fluids tickled to temperature, specs long since decided, minders long since departed. Finally they’re ours, and over the next couple of days we’ll drive them hard on road and track, after which their tanks will be empty and their tyres will be fried and we will say once and for all which is best.

The McLaren carries the momentum into this test; it’s the car that’s watched the 458 from a distance and had time to figure out how to do it better. Gut feel – and lots of hypey PR – says it’ll win.

Yet the McLaren experience begins with frustration as you fruitlessly try to find its automotive clitoris of a ‘door handle’ – you stroke the underside of the door’s strake and, so the plan goes, the aperture pops open. You’ll get it eventually, but a valet parking attendant will doubtless one day die of old age before retrieving a 12C from a hotel car park.

Once the door is open, it’s like one of those big pointy foam hands that annoying people wear in football stadiums. It points at your face and narrows your range of movement for straddling that thick carbon monotub and placing your feet into the faraway footwell.

Then you close the door and settle into a seat that’s more comfortable than the Ferrari’s? (optional) bucket, press the starter button and it becomes clear that what we’re dealing with here is a game-changer: the McLaren is mind-blowingly quick, it rides exceptionally well and the way it stays so flat and composed through fast corners is downright spooky. You just look at where you want to go, decide on the amount of lock you need and power your way through – no confidence-lifts off the throttle, no extra nibbles at the wheel. Wow.

Being naturally aspirated, the Ferrari has the purer engine, but the 12C’s twin-turbo V8 is hugely impressive. It settles to a surprisingly gruff idle, but that melts away when all 443lb ft comes on strong from 3000rpm and doesn’t taper  – at all! – until 7000rpm, one big fist of torque punching you down the road. Turbo engines typically don’t like to rev but it still feels right to wring the McLaren’s neck and give it the full 8500rpm when you’ve got space. Up there it doesn’t feel turbocharged at all.

The Ferrari certainly won’t be having this one all its own way. But to presume it’s either McLaren or Ferrari taking top honours is like expecting your F1 team-mate to dive out of the way or crash to help you win – there are other cars vying for your £170k or so, too. So in that same layby sit Mercedes SLS AMG, Porsche 911 GT2 RS, the Lamborghini Gallardo Performante and the Gallardo-based Audi R8 V10. You can snap up one of those for £109k. Peanuts!

It had to be here, the R8: it’s the evolutionary footstep where the hunched apeman transitions into the upright Homo sapien, the supercar you can take home to your parents. Would Ferrari and McLaren and everyone else have put such a focus on all-round ability without it? Doubt it.

Climb in and the switchgear and dials and the touch and smell of everything is unmistakably Audi. Perhaps you might not like a TT driver to feel quite so at home, but the R8 is so un-Audi-like and so un-Lamborghini-like to drive that it’s genuinely bewildering. It just feels so light and lithe and linear. Is it sure it’s not adopted?

The R8 flows over tricky roads like a rolling pin over hot dough, the steering is delicately weighted and the engine is just magnificent, the way it’s so docile around town and quiet when you want to fly under the radar, but when you open the taps it spins so freely and smoothly and the note hardens to such an intensely frenetic waaaaaaa that it’s just amazing.

When you’re driving the balls off this thing and you grab the gearlever it snaps into the centre of the gate and from there you just slice it through what feels like a very slight magnetic force and into the next cog. Bliss.
I got chatting to an AMG engineer about the R8 at the Geneva show in 2008. ‘Great isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Light like a feather. Fantastic.’

The R8 clearly made an impression, and its focus on all-round usability has filtered through to the SLS – Merc’s first return to the segment since the Mercedes/McLaren SLR joint project, just as the MP4-12C is McLaren’s.
Yet the SLS is more GT than supercar. It’s the only car here to have its 6.2-litre V8 mounted up front, albeit slung way back in its extraordinarily long snozz for excellent weight distribution. Prod the throttle at idle and the SLS rocks like a hot rod; gun it on the move and it lets rip like Keef Richards coughing up phlegm then unleashing a solo to blow Slash into his Marshall stack; get on the throttle early in corners and you’ll feel the rear end twitch and squirm. It is unique in this group for its raw musclecar attitude, yet it has civility too, what with its comfy seats, excellent infotainment system and beautifully put together, special-feeling interior. And it steers with an immediacy and delicacy that confounds your expectations when you first peer down that aircraft carrier bonnet.

Yet there are flaws. The dual-clutch ’box is infuriatingly reluctant to respond to paddleshift commands, and the GT focus means it turns to mush on track. I liked the ride quality when I drove it on smoother French roads last year, but it gets too spiky when you’re driving fast over UK B-roads, at which point you descend into a vicious circle with the sharp throttle and average traction and kangaroo down the road. It just doesn’t feel as focused as the competition when you drive at ten tenths.

Still, big miles are far more easily swallowed in the SLS than the Lamborghini Performante, the drop-top version of the hardcore Gallardo Superleggera. Drive it for a few hours and you’ll tire of the Lambo’s lumpy low-speed ride, dated sat-nav, windy hood and fixed-back seats that cosset like a kick in the kidneys.

But when you’re driving great roads for the hell of it, it all comes together. The differentiation to the R8 – with which it shares its DNA – is staggering. The Lambo’s fantastic steering is far meatier; its similar V10 engine is louder and fiercer; and, in Corsa mode, the automated manual gearshifts whack through the transmission like a sledgehammer pounding an anvil. Its four-wheel drive chassis is also more front-biased than the Audi R8’s, so it claws its way over crests, pulls you through corners like a roller coaster. It is packed with addictive drama, yet anyone can pedal this Lamborghini quickly.

And so we drive and drive, supercar headlights catching in supercar mirrors, engines wailing, speeds escalating, surprised sheep pulling the splits as we hove into view, the road running and running into the distance, and every single one of us coming back to that same layby and clambering out, eyebrows raised. ‘That was brilliant,’ we all gush about everything. But after half a day one thing is clear: the McLaren has not pulled a gap to the Ferrari.

As soon as you move off in the Ferrari it just feels so together, every corner of the car in sync with the other, the whole thing shifting like one tight unit, just like the McLaren. Yet despite this rock-solid resolve it rides incredibly compliantly – not as well as the McLaren, perhaps, but well enough. Then you floor the throttle and, as the chap who stumbled on our shoot and asked for a ride observed: ‘F**k, f**k, f**k, oh my god, f**********k!’

The steering is so swift that the way it pivots around its grippy front end takes your breath away, the brake pedal has a solid feel that you immediately trust and the gears fire home with just a tap of your pinky on the paddleshift, a subtle blur to the Lambo’s cataclysmic blow.

But what I love most about the 458 is the absolutely precise interaction between the accelerator, the rear tyres and the E-diff, the way you can mete out the power so accurately and feel the effect of every stroke of throttle on the way the rear tyres dig into the Tarmac. It’s a key part of the appeal of this non-turbo’d V8, but that it’s also sonically incredible – that it evolves from an unsteady bwaaaaaaaaaa to a near-F1 scream – and that it revs so energetically and with such a lack of inertia makes it the best engine of a spectacular group.

When you drive the Ferrari hard, there’s not really anything you can point at and say ‘That’s it, that’s the something I don’t like.’ You can with the McLaren: the mushy response of its endlessly strong £9.8k carbon brakes; the sleepy throttle response that makes the Ferrari feel wired on Red Bull; the shunt when you back in and out of the throttle and the turbos are fully lit; the non-linear effect when the spoiler turns into an airbrake on high-speed stops; the unnecessarily heavy effort it takes to pull the paddleshift, a by-product of the pointless pre-cog system (you give the paddle a soft pull so the gear can be ready, then a hard one so it instantly engages); the fact that Ferrari’s manettino  is the more intuitive interface for shifting between stability modes and shift speeds and so on.
More tellingly, you might find yourself bounding cross country at custodial speeds in the McLaren and craving just a bit more drama.

But when I drove a 458 to Goodwood from Maranello last summer, it was clear McLaren could attack it in the all-rounder stakes – cruise control, comfier seats, less noise, and none of those daft steering wheel-mounted indicators and wipers that I still can’t fathom. And Woking has achieved much of that – the McLaren is the easier car to live with.

Two of the best drives I had in the McLaren came when we were heading back from our shoot in the dark, and I wound down the pace a little and just wanted to get back to the hotel. Suddenly I started to prefer the 12C’s calmer steering to the Ferrari’s manic rack, preferred the more linear precision of its response immediately off-centre. I began to appreciate how succinctly you could link together a series of bends and how absolutely bloody brilliant that ride quality is. These were proper, seared-in-the-back-of-my-mind magic moments, moments when I started to ‘get’ what the McLaren was all about.

But here’s a twist: the Porsche GT2 RS. The rear-wheel drive, twin turbo 911 has a widow-maker reputation, and you’d think that adding an RS suffix to that nomenclature would only fast-track you to the nearest morgue. And, yes, the power and torque outputs have swollen, but the ride’s now more compliant, so this Porsche does a better job of keeping itself attached to Tarmac, so it’s actually easier to drive hard. And because it’s an evolution of a decades old design, it feels instantly, reassuringly familiar. There are actual door handles and indicator stalks, windows you can see out of, a clutch pedal and gearstick, and a button that you push once to instantly disable absolutely every safety net, rather than giving it the weird Masonic handshake that the McLaren demands.

Porsche is lucky that it didn’t once rain during our shoot, because we all know that the super-sticky Michelin Cup tyres are to be trusted around standing water like George Best was around alcohol. But here, under a white-hot June sun and wide-open blue sky, the GT2 RS is life-affirmingly good, spitting its anodyne, boost-laden soundtrack over the moors like the RAF jets that scorch overhead.

You might look at the 6800rpm redline and think it disappointing after the 9000rpm Ferrari, but this is a different kind of visceral. It punches on boost at 2500rpm and you’ll probably shift by 5500rpm, and within that 3000rpm window you’ll have a whopping great 516lb ft on tap.

 It takes a while to build up to it, but the first time you swing the GT2 into a fast corner without a dab on the brakes and feel the nose bite at the apex with absolute clarity and you get on the throttle early and sense the back arc round just a smidge is, well, it’s a moment that makes you consider ranking it first of six amazing cars.

I love the gearshift, love the solid brake pedal feel, love the fact that the torque surplus really makes the 911 chassis work hard while the well-resolved stability controls watch your back. Not so keen on no air-con on a 24degC day, mind, and, erm, sod driving it in the wet.

I keep driving the other cars and thinking ‘nah, the Porsche can’t win, can it?’ then I get back in and it ignites my adrenaline all over again. It might, you know, it bloody well might.

Only one way to settle it for sure: to Rockingham  racetrack for fast laps with ex-Stig and racing driver Ben Collins.

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VW Amarok in Patagonia (CAR archive, April 2010)

By Ben Oliver

Memory Lane

12 August 2012 10:00

I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. I’m standing on a tonne of timber piled, unsecured, into the back of a Volkswagen Amarok with the tailgate down, and I’m clinging to its fat chrome roll bar because beneath me the truck is bellowing and bucking over soft sand and thick clumps of brush as it climbs a 45-degree mountainside, sending me, the two blokes standing next to me and the timber bouncing wildly. We’re either going straight up, making the timber start to slide out the back, or straight across; our direction decided mostly by which way the front wheels land each time they rear up. Straight across is scarier. This is what made me climb out of the cabin and stand in the back; if we barrel-roll down the mountainside I thought I’d rather try to leap off the side than get stuck in the cab.

But now I’m not so sure I’d be able to leap clear of a fast-rolling truck and 40 thick eucalyptus fence posts. This is easily the most dangerous thing I have ever done in a vehicle, and very possibly the last.

Patagonia is pick-up country. The gaucho cowboys and ranchero farm owners who work the vast arid steppe of southern Argentina have – mostly – swapped their horse for a HiLux. The ranches down here are called estancias, and pick-ups are called estancieras (‘the lady of the ranch’), but they don’t get treated like ladies. As part of its plan to be the world’s biggest carmaker Volkswagen is making its first proper, one-tonne pick-up; the Amarok takes direct aim at the famously indestructible Toyota HiLux and is built in Argentina. So we thought we’d give one to the gauchos to see if they could break it. And if they didn’t, we’d use it to explore this empty, epic landscape.

Our ranchero is, somewhat disappointingly, called Alastair Whewell. His dad is from Manchester and his mum’s from Oxford but Alastair is the real deal. His old man, Roger, shipped a Land Rover to Colombia in the late ’60s and over a decade and 250,000 miles of driving made his way south to Patagonia, climbing South America’s mountains – some of them never before conquered – as he went. When he got here he rebuilt the Land Rover’s engine with a stock of old parts he found in a crate in a general store, and decided to stay. He bought the 25,000-acre Fortin Chacabuco ranch, and Alastair and his brothers were born here.

In fact, they’re the typical Patagonian family: immigrants attempting to earn a living from this unforgiving land. Alastair is fully Patagonian; he speaks English with an odd Spanish-Mancunian accent and he shares the Patagonian look and attitude with everyone else who lives here. Whether European, indigenous Mapuche, or Mestizo mix, they all have a certain leatheriness of skin from the fierce, fast winds, eyes narrowed by the intense, ultraviolet sunlight (even the sheep get sunburnt down here) a steely self-sufficiency and complete contempt for Argentina’s politicians.

Alastair also typifies Patagonians’ dependence on pick-ups, and drives a battered ’66 Ford. ‘The stuff I’ve done in that truck,’ he shakes his head. ‘When times were tough here and we had to hunt deer just to eat in winter I had 15 females piled in the back. We had to cut our way through the snow and ice to get out and back. It looks like shit but it’s never let me down.’ His four-year-old son, Valentino, is learning to drive in it, but there’s no sentiment. I get the feeling that, like a horse, if it went lame, he’d shoot it.

So the plan is to swap ’66 Ford for 2010 VW, and see how it copes. First task is to transport some sheep. My efforts to help catch them are inhibited by the fact that I think we’re taking them to be slaughtered, so instead Diego catches all three. Diego works for Alastair, refers to him – without irony – as gringo, and is a proper gaucho, wearing a beret and dagger tucked into his belt. Its blade looks sharper than his intellect but boy can he can rugby-tackle bolting ewes. In minutes three are lying, feet bound, in the Amarok, defecating furiously over our pristine load bay.

Turns out that although they will eventually end up as mutton, they’ll have a few months of gentle retirement working as woolly lawnmowers at another smallholding down the road, and that’s where we’re headed. Once I’ve turned them loose we head back to the ranch by the direct route: straight across the steppe. No tracks here; you just aim the truck at the target and go, blasting over the green and gold tufts of grass and brush and surfing over the loose, sandy soil. Environmentalists will have a fit, but here it’s the only way. ‘Sometimes there’s a track, but usually there isn’t,’ says Alastair. ‘It’s not like we’re short of grass. You see that range of mountains?’ He indicates a dun-coloured rock massif miles off on the horizon. ‘Our other fence is on the far side of that.’

Back at the estancia we start loading the Amarok again. This time it’s six-foot long eucalyptus posts weighing at least 25kg each, which Alastair needs to rebuild a fence lost in a wildfire. We start piling them into the back of the truck: Diego counts 47 of them and decides we have enough. It probably also puts us well over the Amarok’s 1147kg maximum payload. We also have a full tank of diesel and five blokes to carry, and the fence is halfway up one of those mountains and totally off-piste.

This is a proper test; I’m not entirely certain we’re going to make it. Despite square-jawed good looks that suggest V8 power the Amarok has only a two-litre diesel engine compared with the HiLux’s three, although it’s twin-turbocharged to produce 163bhp to the Toyota’s 171, and more importantly has way more torque with 295lb ft to the HiLux’s 253. It’s also an old-school pick-up with a ladder-frame chassis and leaf-spring rear suspension. VW claims the Amarok will haul its full load up a 45-degree slope; if it’s going to be the success they hope for in places like this, where people buy millions of pick-ups and flog ’em hard, it had better be able to.

But other than a distinct flat-spot before the turbos spool up around 1500rpm, it surges up the steep, soft tracks that take us up into the ??hills. You can choose either permanent 4Motion four-wheel drive with a variable torque split, or the selectable system fitted to ours, which offers rear- or four-wheel drive and a low-range transfer case. You can shift on the fly, and we don’t need the low range until we’ve left the track and are headed straight up the slope towards the fence line.

Even then the Amarok keeps going; the problem is our lax approach to loading. On side slopes the posts all try to roll downhill, piling up against one side of the load bay and bringing the truck even closer to tipping over, and when we go straight up they try to slide straight out the back. We stop every few dozen yards to drop a few more off, but when Alastair gets hard on the gas to bounce over a particularly big tuft the Amarok rears up and the remaining half-tonne goes shooting out the back, and it’s only by jumping up that Diego and I avoid getting dumped out with it. Diego bangs on the roof to tell Alastair we’ve gone as far as we can. We don’t bother putting it back on; the fencers can shift it by hand.

Inside, Alastair wipes the sweat from his face. ‘Shit, that was a test.’ He seems genuinely impressed. ‘I could never have done that in the Ford. I was going to have to bring that timber up here by horse. I don’t think 99.9% of the people who buy this thing will ever do anything like that. Just don’t tell the people who own it what you did in it.’ I don’t think we can hide it; the back is full of sheep shit, we’ve cracked a tail-lamp, torn off a mud-flap and have a puncture.

Alastair and Roger ask us where we plan to go next. We tell them we’re planning a long loop through the steppe, using two of Argentina’s most famous roads; the Ruta 40, which will take you from one end of this seemingly endless country to the other, if you have a spare month, and the Ruta 23, an almost entirely unmade road that runs from here, near the Chilean border, all the way east to the ocean.

Along the way we’ll pass through a couple of remote gaucho towns seldom visited by outsiders. Roger knows one of them. ‘Ha! That’s where I found those Land Rover parts. I haven’t been there in decades. You should see if that general store is still there. You’ll love it. It’s the kind of place that has a brassiere hanging up next to a camshaft.’
Alastair isn’t so sure. ‘It’s the Wild West out there. If they don’t like you, they’ll just stab you.’

Patagonia seems to feature on every serious traveller’s list of places to see before they die. Road-trip across it and your average speed will be dented by the constant need to stop and take pictures. Where there is a paved road, it runs arrow-straight over the vast, flat glacial valley floors, the twin yellow central lines converging at a vanishing point in the far, far distance. Bare brown hills rise up sharply at the edge of the flat steppe and beyond them are snow-covered volcanic peaks of the Pacific Ring of Fire. There are long, glacial lakes whipped into three-metre swells by the fierce winds, iron and copper deposits that stain the mountainsides red and blue, and condors and turkey vultures circling against weird cloud formations unlike any I’ve seen before.

Despite the emptiness it seems there’s no space for the Mapuche people, who replaced the Tehuelche. The Benetton family owns millions of acres of land here and is pretty unpopular with the locals; Mapuche means ‘people of the earth’ and they simply think the Benettons have stolen it. We stop to visit a small Mapuche community which has ‘reclaimed’ some of the land. The elder we speak to is friendly but apologetic. They’re having a birthday party, he explains. He would invite us in, but some of the tribe’s elderly will be there, and, in his words, they don’t like white folks much since we stole all their land.

Few of the roads are paved, but it’s a tribute to the Amarok’s refinement that signs saying we have 100km of loose gravel track before we get to the next town don’t just make us turn back. It’s for conditions like this that carmakers torture-test their prototypes. If they’re not pick-ups, the few cars we meet tend to be ancient Renault saloons, rust-free and bleached by the sun but increasingly skeletal as bonnets, bootlids and other bits get rattled off.

The Amarok’s manners – ride, handling, steering – are better than you have a right to expect from a ladder-framed truck. The engine, borrowed from the Transporter van, is more vocal than you’d expect in a car but otherwise refined; there’s little vibration through the control surfaces and, unlike most commercial diesels, it doesn’t shake itself into life like a wet dog. And the six-speed manual ’box – the only option at first – is great; muscular enough to remind you you’re driving a truck, but way slicker and more precise than any rival we’ve tried.

It’s better inside too: the plastics are a grade tougher and shinier than a Golf but two grades smarter than any other pick-up. This is easily the most car-like truck we’ve tried; it might not have the volumes – at first – to challenge the HiLux but it certainly has the ability. There isn’t much to dislike, other than that lack of torque off-boost, weak headlights and vague-feeling brakes. The Amarok’s most impressive quality, and one we’re bloody grateful for down here – is its range. There aren’t many two-litre, 34.8mpg diesels that carry an 80-litre tank, making it good for a theoretical 640 miles – or over 1000km – between fills. We managed 500 miles despite the off-roading and some sustained 100mph-plus running over the plains. At these speeds it feels utterly secure, and the big mirrors display a glorious view down the side of the truck to the dust billowing out behind you against a deep blue sky.

Heard the old cliché, ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’? That’s Patagonia. The roads and views are simply astonishing. The place seems to distort time and distance; the few settlements seem to take an hour longer to reach than you’d calculated, but when you finally get there you wonder why you’d bothered stopping. They’re dusty, dirt-poor places and it’s clear how little this land yields from the way people have to live; often in wooden shacks no bigger than a garden shed, built in shanties on the edge of town.

Our final stop is Pilcaniyeu, as the sun goes down. This is the remote gaucho town where Roger rebuilt his Land Rover. Federico, our interpreter, takes his sunglasses off, and not just because the light is finally waning. ‘They don’t like it if you don’t look them in the eye,’ he explains. ‘And it’s probably been a while since any Europeans have been in town.’ (Down here everyone has a pick-up story: Federico’s best is the time he and four buddies drenched themselves in water and drove their Mitsubishi L200 through a brush fire which they’d been fighting but which had encircled them.) We find the boliche, a
sort of combined bar and shop that might conceivably have been the place where Roger found his parts. I would ask, but the locals – all looking like entirely authentic extras from The Magnificent Seven, and tired and dusty after a long day’s work – don’t seem too chatty.

What we need is an ice-breaker.

‘So,’ says the main man, ‘Margaret Thatcher. She’s dead now, right?’ With fresh tension over oil rights in the Falklands breaking out just as we arrived, I’d wondered how long it would be before someone mentioned the war, and remember Alastair’s grim warning.

‘No,’ I reply. Stony silence. ‘But she’s pretty old now. I don’t think she’s got long left.’

They all cheer and raise their glasses to that; but had I brought them news that an Argentine politician might soon check out, the reaction would have been the same. And instead they start asking us about our Amarok, because out here your livestock, your pick-up and a cold beer at the end of another hard day are all that really matter.

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Stalking Kimi (CAR archive April 2010)

By Ben Barry

Memory Lane

16 August 2012 09:30

This feels wrong. We’ve only just arrived at Färjestad – venue for the Super Special Stage that kicks off Rally Sweden – yet in a few seconds I’ll be standing next to Kimi Räikkönen, one-time F1 world champion, now full-time rally driver – the only F1 driver ever to make such a full-time switch.

We’ve sneaked in to an autograph session and moved quickly up the line by pushing past small children and bypassing other drivers. Any second now I’ll be able to talk to Kimi, maybe even tickle him under the chin, and there’ll be absolutely no security guards or barriers between me and one of the world’s highest-paid sports stars, just a flimsy wooden table.

I’m surprised how nervous I am – my heart spikes, my mouth dries and my carotid arteries pound in my neck. What to say to Kimi? What to say?

Two girls ahead get a signed picture – no pleasantries exchanged – then walk off upright, breathless, eyes wide, before having an entire conversation of convulsive shrieks. There are male fans too, all dispatched silently. It’s only the youngest kids that Räikkönen goes out of his way for, all of whom are too shy to make eye contact. He leans over the table, smiles, speaks briefly and places the signed card in their hand. My turn. Oh god.

‘Hello Kimi, we’re from CAR Magazine and we’ve come to…’ Räikkönen looks up slowly from under the oversized brim of his Red Bull baseball cap and fixes his wolf-like, ice blue eyes dead on mine. He looks absolutely furious, and I mean absolutely, genuinely ready-to-punch-me angry.

‘Ach, this is not the time for this,’ he drones. ‘I just wanted to say we’ve come to follow you on the rally,’ I stammer. ‘Look, well, take this,’ he says, staring into the distance, handing me two glossy bits of signed card that depict his Citroën C4 jumping through the air. ‘Are you enjoying rallying?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ comes the reply, one laboured with the emphasis a child might use to assure his mother he will tidy his bedroom.

Later his PR will explain that Citroën – our hosts – hold no real sway over Räikkönen because he’s Red Bull’s driver. An interview is impossible; if I’m lucky I’ll get a stalky fan pic.

Rallying is very much Plan B for the 2007 F1 world champion. Plan A was to contest the 2010 F1 championship – he was contracted to Ferrari this year, but Maranello pushed him out to make way for Fernando Alonso. Other talks stalled, and so Räikkönen’s long-held WRC ambitions took over, the Finn hooking up with fellow countryman Kaj Lindström, one-time co-driver for multiple WRC champion Tommi Mäkinen.

‘We first talked when I worked with Tommi [who retired at the end of 2003!]. Kimi said he’d like to do rally one day, and I said I would be his co-driver,’ says Lindström, revealing a more deeply-held desire and sense of loyalty on Räikkönen’s part than his icy, stoic demeanour can suggest.

Making – and trusting – pacenotes is something Räikkönen has struggled with after the predictability of F1 circuits. So, how do they build that trust? Through simply driving? ‘Well, you have to do things to get to know each other outside the car too,’ says Lindström. ‘What like?’ ‘Well… things.’ All Räikkönen’s inner circle are hesitant when it comes to fleshing out details.

The pair have done five rallies so far, this weekend’s 2010 season opener being their sixth, and Räikkönen’s first as a fully fledged WRC driver. He’s driving a Citroën C4 alongside Sébastien Ogier in the Citroën Junior Team, a peg below world champion Sébastien Loeb and Danni Sordo’s factory effort.

When you look at the awnings and the slick team transporters, the two outfits look pretty similar, but where as many as 70 people work at the factory team, just 17 work with Räikkönen and Ogier. Testing is far more limited too, and the car – though similar – is to Loeb’s 2008 spec. Meanwhile, Räikkönen’s engineer, Cederic Mazenq, is a young chap whose motorsport CV dates back to only 2006 and whose WRC career began only in 2009. No red carpet here.

‘Kimi rang me personally in October last year to ask if he could do this,’ says no-nonsense Citroën Racing boss Olivier Quesnel. ‘I said he would need to bring the budget. Red Bull paid; we met in January.’

Does Räikkönen get preferential treatment? ‘No, he has to go fast first. He is like a young driver, rallying is very complicated and he has to learn. But I know that he’s doing it very seriously and really wants to succeed. After the first half of the year we’ll see, but I’m sure he’ll do well.’

‘He is professional, open-minded and clever,’ adds engineer Mazenq, ‘and his feedback – because of F1 – is very precise; he feels every click on the dampers. But he knows it’s a new challenge, that he can’t yet compete with the top drivers and that he has to learn slowly.

‘We have tried to set up his car so it is easier for him, so that he can concentrate 70% on driving, 30% on pacenotes. He has a slightly softer suspension set-up than the others so he can easily feel the lateral and longitudinal grip and have more confidence. But he is smoother on entry with the steering than normal, so he gets understeer. We have to half-way adapt the car, half-way adapt Kimi.’

Some moan that rallying isn’t as gruelling as it was, but they’re still long old days on the WRC. It starts on Thursday at 8pm with the Super Special, two cars racing Scalextric-style in a stadium. The next day starts at 8.18am in the forests, the drivers barely stopping until gone 8pm. Saturday is ‘just’ 7.58am until nearer 6pm; Sunday 7.52am until 3.30pm. During that time the drivers will pound 345km of difficult stages, trusting pacenotes entirely as they commit to blind bends, later navigating a further 445km on public roads as spiked tyres rumble coarsely below them. F1 it ain’t.

At 8am on Friday we drive to the stages with studded winter tyres clawing at icy, snow-dusted roads, grateful for our multiple thermal layers and waterproofs and thick boots as the temperature dips to –21degC.

We park and walk into the forests, and the sun spears through evergreens laden with snow, backlighting smoke from fires that fans have lit to keep warm and cook food, a smell of sausages wafting through the sharp, cold air. There’s a lot of beer about, kids roaming, Finnish flags waving and just a handful of marshals who’ll blow a whistle seconds before a rally car roars by at 75mph in a place where you’d barely top 30mph.

Loeb is past first in a blur of guttural induction slurps and thunderclaps, then he’s slightly sideways and airborne over a crest, a snowy mist enveloping us in his wake; Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen is next, clearly faster, absolutely on it. Räikkönen’s seventh – quick, committed, but visibly slower. Later he’ll spin, then compound his error by sinking into the soft snow banks at the side of the road while turning round. Twenty six minutes will tick by.

When he rolls into service after dark, Räikkönen is mobbed by the press as we abandon the leaders for a guy who’s now half an hour down on them, 47th out of 54. Barely able to open his door in the crush, he leans out and pushes gently at a photographer. We all sway backwards, and the driver who’s kneeling behind us trying to fix his car gets crushed and pushes back; nobody’s in control of this tumult of flashbulbs and notepads. Räikkönen talks to no-one, but his co-driver does.

‘For a guy who’s done five rallies, his driving is absolutely incredible,’ says Lindström, buzzing with adrenaline. ‘You ask Petter Solberg, anyone, it’s incredible. Okay, it’s unfortunate we went off, but these things happen and Kimi Räikkönen himself was digging us out with a shovel! I just hope people focus on his driving, not making some kind of scandal newspaper story.’

With that Lindström’s gone, checking the car into service, tailed by more reporters. Later we’ll eavesdrop on a WRC TV interview, the only media who get access, but Räikkönen says nothing revelatory – ‘it would be nice to go faster’; ‘it’s much more challenging than F1’ – then, remarkably, pushes past me with what I’m sure is a horrified glimmer of recognition, walks over to the inebriated Finnish fans who’ve been incessantly shouting his name on megaphones, then laughs and signs their crash helmets. Is my approach too subtle?

Saturday sees some impressive performances on what even leader Hirvonen describes as very difficult stages: ‘There are deep ruts; loose snow, ice and gravel. You take chances all the time.’ Räikkönen remains consistent, if unspectacular – 54.4sec off the pace on stage nine in 11th; a minute down in 32nd through 10; 22.8sec down but up to sixth on stage 15.

We continue to follow him everywhere. When he gets out of his car to check tyre pressures at a remote refuelling station, we bound out from behind a pile of logs; when he takes the back way into the service area, he doubletakes as I wave from the side of the road; when we stake out his motorhome, he slips out of another door and emerges between two tents. I stand next to his car for an hour at evening service as my feet freeze, then discover he’s eating in Citroën’s hospitality area. He is as well; Kimi Räikkönen eating his dinner right there. We can just walk in.

I take the horse whisperer’s approach – walk in timidly, look at the floor, take a seat at the opposite end of the marquee, sit there for a few minutes, then approach his PR while WRC TV grabs an interview. One picture with Kimi. One picture. ‘Kimi. One picture,’ says his PR.

Kimi Räikkönen rolls his eyes, then walks over and stands next to me. ‘Thanks Kimi,’ I say. There’s no reply. Mark Fagelson takes the snap. Räikkönen immediately retreats to safety. That’s it. We’re done. Wow.

The rally ends the next day after 21 demanding stages. Hirvonen finishes 42.3sec ahead of Loeb who’s 33.1sec ahead of Jari-Matti Latvala. Possibly the world’s best F1 driver finishes in 30th, 37min 47.2sec off the winner and over 30 minutes behind fifth-place teammate Ogier. ‘In F1 the only big change is when you’re on slicks in the wet,’ he tells WRC TV later, ‘but in rally every corner can be different and usually is. I have a lot of respect for the top-level guys.’

Will he be back for 2011? Team boss Olivier Quesnel hasn’t ruled out promotion to the works team, but I doubt it. Räikkönen says he enjoys the WRC’s no-bullshit ethos, but with that comes an autograph session that anyone can gatecrash; a service park where journalists roam in wild packs; the necessity to drive on roads where the public can simply follow you.

The WRC won’t change to accommodate Räikkönen, and you wonder if he might not crave a bit of F1 bullshit – some properly defined barriers between him, the public and the press – from time to time. It’d certainly get me off his back. As we leave to catch our plane I figure his PR is getting me off his back too when he tells me to email some questions and Räikkönen will answer them. It feels like emailing Father Christmas. Then, four days later, a response pings into my inbox. I can’t quite believe it.

‘Do you have rally heroes?’ I’ve asked. ‘No, I never had any heroes in F1 and it is the same in rallying,’ writes Räikkönen. ‘But I’ve always been friendly with rally drivers like Tommi Mäkinen, who has run my car for me in the past. He has been a great champion.’

‘Is rally scarier than F1?’ ‘I’m never scared in a car so it’s hard to say. It’s true that in rallying you are close to the trees, but the speeds are lower than F1. At the moment it is more difficult than F1, certainly!’

‘Will rallying make you a better F1 driver?’ ‘I don’t think so as it’s another style of driving completely. In rallying you are competing on such a huge variety of surfaces and conditions, and technically F1 is very different with all the parameters like aerodynamics that don’t really play a part in rallying.’

‘Was Sweden more gruelling than an F1 weekend?’ ‘In some ways, yes. We were leaving at 5.30am, then not getting back until after 10pm. You have just half an hour at service halts, then a bit longer in the evening, so there is not much time to do everything. On the other hand, the physical forces on your body are not as big as they are in F1.’

‘Everyone says this is a learning year for you in the WRC, but can you really see yourself in the 2011 WRC?’ ‘There’s no point in thinking about that until halfway through this season, but for sure there is a possibility that I might stay in rallying next year.’

All that time stalking, freezing and travelling and a simple email answers more than we’d probably have covered in person. ‘The trick,’ says the PR, ‘is to get him when he’s bored.’

As we’ve learned, that’s harder than Räikkönen’s apathetic glaze suggests.

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McLaren 12C vs the world - Part 1 (CAR archive, June 2011)

By Ben Barry

CAR Features

24 August 2012 12:00

So, this is it, the big one. In a layby on an empty Welsh road linking nowhere in particular to somewhere else altogether sit a McLaren MP4-12C and Ferrari 458 Italia. Both cars are brimmed with superplus, fluids tickled to temperature, specs long since decided, minders long since departed. Finally they’re ours, and over the next couple of days we’ll drive them hard on road and track, after which their tanks will be empty and their tyres will be fried and we will say once and for all which is best.

The McLaren carries the momentum into this test; it’s the car that’s watched the 458 from a distance and had time to figure out how to do it better. Gut feel – and lots of hypey PR – says it’ll win.

Yet the McLaren experience begins with frustration as you fruitlessly try to find its automotive clitoris of a ‘door handle’ – you stroke the underside of the door’s strake and, so the plan goes, the aperture pops open. You’ll get it eventually, but a valet parking attendant will doubtless one day die of old age before retrieving a 12C from a hotel car park.

Once the door is open, it’s like one of those big pointy foam hands that annoying people wear in football stadiums. It points at your face and narrows your range of movement for straddling that thick carbon monotub and placing your feet into the faraway footwell.

Then you close the door and settle into a seat that’s more comfortable than the Ferrari’s (optional) bucket, press the starter button and it becomes clear that what we’re dealing with here is a game-changer: the McLaren is mind-blowingly quick, it rides exceptionally well and the way it stays so flat and composed through fast corners is downright spooky. You just look at where you want to go, decide on the amount of lock you need and power your way through – no confidence-lifts off the throttle, no extra nibbles at the wheel. Wow.

Being naturally aspirated, the Ferrari has the purer engine, but the 12C’s twin-turbo V8 is hugely impressive. It settles to a surprisingly gruff idle, but that melts away when all 443lb ft comes on strong from 3000rpm and doesn’t taper  – at all! – until 7000rpm, one big fist of torque punching you down the road. Turbo engines typically don’t like to rev but it still feels right to wring the McLaren’s neck and give it the full 8500rpm when you’ve got space. Up there it doesn’t feel turbocharged at all.

The Ferrari certainly won’t be having this one all its own way. But to presume it’s either McLaren or Ferrari taking top honours is like expecting your F1 team-mate to dive out of the way or crash to help you win – there are other cars vying for your £170k or so, too. So in that same layby sit Mercedes SLS AMG, Porsche 911 GT2 RS, the Lamborghini Gallardo Performante and the Gallardo-based Audi R8 V10. You can snap up one of those for £109k. Peanuts!

It had to be here, the R8: it’s the evolutionary footstep where the hunched apeman transitions into the upright Homo sapien, the supercar you can take home to your parents. Would Ferrari and McLaren and everyone else have put such a focus on all-round ability without it? Doubt it.

Climb in and the switchgear and dials and the touch and smell of everything is unmistakably Audi. Perhaps you might not like a TT driver to feel quite so at home, but the R8 is so un-Audi-like and so un-Lamborghini-like to drive that it’s genuinely bewildering. It just feels so light and lithe and linear. Is it sure it’s not adopted?

The R8 flows over tricky roads like a rolling pin over hot dough, the steering is delicately weighted and the engine is just magnificent, the way it’s so docile around town and quiet when you want to fly under the radar, but when you open the taps it spins so freely and smoothly and the note hardens to such an intensely frenetic waaaaaaa that it’s just amazing.

When you’re driving the balls off this thing and you grab the gearlever it snaps into the centre of the gate and from there you just slice it through what feels like a very slight magnetic force and into the next cog. Bliss.
I got chatting to an AMG engineer about the R8 at the Geneva show in 2008. ‘Great isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Light like a feather. Fantastic.’

The R8 clearly made an impression, and its focus on all-round usability has filtered through to the SLS – Merc’s first return to the segment since the Mercedes/McLaren SLR joint project, just as the MP4-12C is McLaren’s.
Yet the SLS is more GT than supercar. It’s the only car here to have its 6.2-litre V8 mounted up front, albeit slung way back in its extraordinarily long snozz for excellent weight distribution. Prod the throttle at idle and the SLS rocks like a hot rod; gun it on the move and it lets rip like Keef Richards coughing up phlegm then unleashing a solo to blow Slash into his Marshall stack; get on the throttle early in corners and you’ll feel the rear end twitch and squirm. It is unique in this group for its raw musclecar attitude, yet it has civility too, what with its comfy seats, excellent infotainment system and beautifully put together, special-feeling interior. And it steers with an immediacy and delicacy that confounds your expectations when you first peer down that aircraft carrier bonnet.

Yet there are flaws. The dual-clutch ’box is infuriatingly reluctant to respond to paddleshift commands, and the GT focus means it turns to mush on track. I liked the ride quality when I drove it on smoother French roads last year, but it gets too spiky when you’re driving fast over UK B-roads, at which point you descend into a vicious circle with the sharp throttle and average traction and kangaroo down the road. It just doesn’t feel as focused as the competition when you drive at ten tenths.

Still, big miles are far more easily swallowed in the SLS than the Lamborghini Performante, the drop-top version of the hardcore Gallardo Superleggera. Drive it for a few hours and you’ll tire of the Lambo’s lumpy low-speed ride, dated sat-nav, windy hood and fixed-back seats that cosset like a kick in the kidneys.

But when you’re driving great roads for the hell of it, it all comes together. The differentiation to the R8 – with which it shares its DNA – is staggering. The Lambo’s fantastic steering is far meatier; its similar V10 engine is louder and fiercer; and, in Corsa mode, the automated manual gearshifts whack through the transmission like a sledgehammer pounding an anvil. Its four-wheel drive chassis is also more front-biased than the Audi R8’s, so it claws its way over crests, pulls you through corners like a roller coaster. It is packed with addictive drama, yet anyone can pedal this Lamborghini quickly.

And so we drive and drive, supercar headlights catching in supercar mirrors, engines wailing, speeds escalating, surprised sheep pulling the splits as we hove into view, the road running and running into the distance, and every single one of us coming back to that same layby and clambering out, eyebrows raised. ‘That was brilliant,’ we all gush about everything. But after half a day one thing is clear: the McLaren has not pulled a gap to the Ferrari.
As soon as you move off in the Ferrari it just feels so together, every corner of the car in sync with the other, the whole thing shifting like one tight unit, just like the McLaren. Yet despite this rock-solid resolve it rides incredibly compliantly – not as well as the McLaren, perhaps, but well enough. Then you floor the throttle and, as the chap who stumbled on our shoot and asked for a ride observed: ‘F**k, f**k, f**k, oh my god, f**********k!’

The steering is so swift that the way it pivots around its grippy front end takes your breath away, the brake pedal has a solid feel that you immediately trust and the gears fire home with just a tap of your pinky on the paddleshift, a subtle blur to the Lambo’s cataclysmic blow.

But what I love most about the 458 is the absolutely precise interaction between the accelerator, the rear tyres and the E-diff, the way you can mete out the power so accurately and feel the effect of every stroke of throttle on the way the rear tyres dig into the Tarmac. It’s a key part of the appeal of this non-turbo’d V8, but that it’s also sonically incredible – that it evolves from an unsteady bwaaaaaaaaaa to a near-F1 scream – and that it revs so energetically and with such a lack of inertia makes it the best engine of a spectacular group.

When you drive the Ferrari hard, there’s not really anything you can point at and say ‘That’s it, that’s the something I don’t like.’ You can with the McLaren: the mushy response of its? endlessly strong £9.8k carbon brakes; the sleepy throttle response that makes the Ferrari feel wired on Red Bull; the shunt when you back in and out of the throttle and the turbos are fully lit; the non-linear effect when the spoiler turns into an airbrake on high-speed stops; the unnecessarily heavy effort it takes to pull the paddleshift, a by-product of the pointless pre-cog system (you give the paddle a soft pull so the gear can be ready, then a hard one so it instantly engages); the fact that Ferrari’s manettino  is the more intuitive interface for shifting between stability modes and shift speeds and so on.
More tellingly, you might find yourself bounding cross country at custodial speeds in the McLaren and craving just a bit more drama.

But when I drove a 458 to Goodwood from Maranello last summer, it was clear McLaren could attack it in the all-rounder stakes – cruise control, comfier seats, less noise, and none of those daft steering wheel-mounted indicators and wipers that I still can’t fathom. And Woking has achieved much of that – the McLaren is the easier car to live with.

Two of the best drives I had in the McLaren came when we were heading back from our shoot in the dark, and I wound down the pace a little and just wanted to get back to the hotel. Suddenly I started to prefer the 12C’s calmer steering to the Ferrari’s manic rack, preferred the more linear precision of its response immediately off-centre. I began to appreciate how succinctly you could link together a series of bends and how absolutely bloody brilliant that ride quality is. These were proper, seared-in-the-back-of-my-mind magic moments, moments when I started to ‘get’ what the McLaren was all about.

But here’s a twist: the Porsche GT2 RS. The rear-wheel drive, twin turbo 911 has a widow-maker reputation, and you’d think that adding an RS suffix to that nomenclature would only fast-track you to the nearest morgue. And, yes, the power and torque outputs have swollen, but the ride’s now more compliant, so this Porsche does a better job of keeping itself attached to Tarmac, so it’s actually easier to drive hard. And because it’s an evolution of a decades old design, it feels instantly, reassuringly familiar. There are actual door handles and indicator stalks, windows you can see out of, a clutch pedal and gearstick, and a button that you push once to instantly disable absolutely every safety net, rather than giving it the weird Masonic handshake that the McLaren demands.

Porsche is lucky that it didn’t once rain during our shoot, because we all know that the super-sticky Michelin Cup tyres are to be trusted around standing water like George Best was around alcohol. But here, under a white-hot June sun and wide-open blue sky, the GT2 RS is life-affirmingly good, spitting its anodyne, boost-laden soundtrack over the moors like the RAF jets that scorch overhead.

You might look at the 6800rpm redline and think it disappointing after the 9000rpm Ferrari, but this is a different kind of visceral. It punches on boost at 2500rpm and you’ll probably shift by 5500rpm, and within that 3000rpm window you’ll have a whopping great 516lb ft on tap.

 It takes a while to build up to it, but the first time you swing the GT2 into a fast corner without a dab on the brakes and feel the nose bite at the apex with absolute clarity and you get on the throttle early and sense the back arc round just a smidge is, well, it’s a moment that makes you consider ranking it first of six amazing cars.
I love the gearshift, love the solid brake pedal feel, love the fact that the torque surplus really makes the 911 chassis work hard while the well-resolved stability controls watch your back. Not so keen on no air-con on a 24degC day, mind, and, erm, sod driving it in the wet.

I keep driving the other cars and thinking ‘nah, the Porsche can’t win, can it?’ then I get back in and it ignites my adrenaline all over again. It might, you know, it bloody well might.

Only one way to settle it for sure: to Rockingham racetrack for fast laps with ex-Stig and racing driver Ben Collins...

>>For the second part of our McLaren supertest, check out CAR online on Monday 27 August

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To The Batmobile! (CAR archive, February 2011)

By Mark Walton

Stuff We've Done

22 August 2012 09:30

‘What are you going to wear?’ That’s all my friends are interested in. I tell them I’m going to drive the Batmobile from the cult TV series, and all they do is snigger and ask about my clothes.

‘Will you wear a cape?’
‘No.’
‘A mask?’
‘No.’
‘Underpants on the outside of your trousers?’
‘You’re really not funny.’

In reality though, I was having the same thoughts about the car’s owner. When we discovered that Firebox, the gadgets and gifts company, was offering an exact recreation of the original 1966 Batmobile – made to order in America and imported as a £120,000, range-topping indulgence – we were interested. Then we found out someone had actually bought one in the UK, a real customer who’d paid real money. Okay, now we’re really interested in the car, but also I couldn’t wait to meet this mystery buyer. Would he be wearing a cape and a mask? Would his whole house be a slightly creepy facsimile of the Batcave? And would his wife be a leather-clad Catwoman, or a normal, harassed mother-of-three, saying ‘For goodness sake, Gerald, can’t you take up golf like everyone else?’

Sadly, meeting the owner proves a disappointment on that score: Mark Perkins is actually a very normal, very generous guy, with a great sense of humour and a specialist car-hire company called Character Cars. No cave and no cape. Still, the car may be destined for weddings and themed birthday parties, but there’s no disguising Mark’s enthusiasm for his new Bat car – not least because there’s another Batmobile parked next to it in his garage. Maybe it is a geeky obsession after all?

‘I’ve owned the other car for over 20 years,’ Mark tells me, nodding at a huge shape hidden under a dust cover. ‘But the old one’s not quite right – it was built before the internet, before you could do all the research, look at all the pictures.’ He lifts one corner of the cover. He’s right – even from the glimpse I get, I can see the proportions are wrong, the styling a little amateurish – it’s clearly not the real Batmobile.
‘I really wanted one that was exact,’ Mark goes on. ‘Right down to the details in the interior.’

Perkins found his answer in another Mark, Mark Racop of Indiana in the USA. Racop is a proper beardy-weirdy, who looks a dead cert for computer programming if he hadn’t gone into Batmobile production. But you can’t fault his dedication. His first Batcar was a hatchet job, done by him and his friends on a Chevy Monte Carlo back in 1983. Based (I kid you not) on four photos and a Corgi toy, it must have looked like a car crash, because in the summer of 1986 Racop watched all 120 episodes of the original Batman series on VHS, hoping to improve it.

More details and further modifications came in 1996, when pictures of the original Batmobile – built by legendary customizer George Barris – started to circulate on the newfangled internet. By now Racop had a ring-binder full of details, which his girlfriend must have loved flicking through. (What girlfriend?).

Anyway, the real change – the thing that makes Racop’s recreations different to your average backstreet Batjob – comes in 2004. Racop finds an exact copy of the 1955 Lincoln Futura up for auction on Ebay, a non-driveable replica of the concept car that Barris turned into the original 1966 Batmobile (see panel). Racop bought the tatty Futura copy, made a fresh mould from it, and then modified it in the same way Barris had, forty years earlier. That’s why Racop’s Batmobile looks exactly like the original TV star: because it’s based on the original 1950s concept car that spawned it.
Fast forward to 2010, and Racop’s company, Fibreglass Freaks, has now built ten examples of his Batmobile, and Mark Perkins’ car is one of them, the only one in Europe.

Based on a 1970s Lincoln Town Car, the first thing that strikes you is the scale of it. This is one gigantic car: seven-feet wide, 20-feet long, low-riding and finished in a strikingly beautiful paint job – $20,000-worth of deep black, with a ribbon of blood red highlighting the edges. Black is not a colour that disguises bulk, and the Batmobile looks like a grounded stealth bomber with chrome missile launchers. My first thought: looks a nightmare to parallel park.

Beneath the tall double-bubbles, the interior is a 1960s movie-prop-made-real, a camped-up pantomime Bond car with bold red labels for the ‘Bat Ray Projector’, the ‘Detect-a-scope’, and the ‘Emergency Bat Turn Lever’. There’s even a bright red Batphone – like everything else it’s fake, but it’s all real enough, in the sense that buttons click, lights flash, scopes flicker, and a gold antenna sprouts from the bonnet at the trip of a switch. It’s wide-eyed wonderful, and I love it.

Time to drive. To the Batmobile! ‘Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed!’ as Robin would say. In fact, the only advice I get from Mark Perkins is: ‘The gearshift’s sticky and the brakes are a bit severe.’

When the engine starts you know this car belongs in the 1960s muscle era. The Firebox Batmobile comes with a brand new 5.7-litre GM V8, and when it fires it makes that big, lazy blub-blub-blub noise like a waiting tugboat. Slot the gearbox into ‘D’, gently squeeze the throttle, and the car wafts down the road as effortlessly as a featherbed on a train. You sense vast potential under your right foot, but it feels wrong to burn up the road like a drag racer – this is a car that was born to cruise. 

This interior is like no other I’ve ever encountered. Aside from all the crazy Bat-gadgets, the steering wheel has no top rim, which is disconcerting when you come to a roundabout and grab thin air. It has terrible visibility, thanks to the roll bar arch between the occupants, and (despite Batman’s supposedly ‘brilliant analytical mind’) there are no windscreen wipers and no heater.

One thing’s for certain though: it doesn’t need superstrength to drive it. The steering’s so light and loose I feel like someone’s cut the nerve-endings in my arms. The throttle only needs a tickle to get the unstressed V8 to release its 280bhp, and it feels more like an unstoppable gush of water than a bomb going off. The scariest part is when you come to a roundabout – it’s like carrying a ladder over your shoulder, the front swinging out wiiiide in front of you, the tail swinging sloooowly round behind, and all the other drivers swerving out of your way.

And yet, teeth chattering on this foggy winter’s day, it’s hard not to smile. The sheer lunacy of the experience is then amplified and loudhailered down the street like a police warning when we drive through downtown Windsor. This is a car that makes people literally stop and shout out in the street: ‘It’s the Batmobile! Look! It’s Batman!’ And when we park up and climb out, the pavement immediately clogs with folk taking pictures on their phones. Until now, the Ariel Atom was my Number 1 Crowd Stopper. But the Batmobile is in a class of its own: a crowd-pleasing superpower-amongst-supercars.

I’m glad I didn’t wear the cape. Wear the tights and mask, and you’re a comic-obsessed computer programmer who needs a girlfriend. But dress normally, and people gasp and laugh and love your sense of humour. Automotive theatre of the best kind. Thank the Lord for geeks.

To rent the Batmobile, you can contact Mark Perkins through www.character-cars.com. To buy one yourself for £120,000, visit www.firebox.com

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Cannonball Re-run part 1 (CAR archive, January 2011)

By Matt Jones

Reviews

13 August 2012 09:00

‘Wanna court summons, buddy? You got it. Hey, Valleccio, take this asshole’s car. And you – get to the station.’ The fact that I’ve arrived in Times Square from New York’s JFK airport in under an hour is an achievement. A court summons within 60 minutes of leaving my Agony Class seat is, for want of a better word, miraculous.

Having heaved me out of the car like an insolent toddler’s mother, the cop directs me to the Midtown South Precinct, a few blocks away. The Challenger barrels past, full chat. Valleccio clearly approves. ‘Why am I here?’ I venture on arrival. An officer from the scene replies: ‘Terrorism.’

Sweaty and pitiful, I begin simultaneously plotting an exit strategy and avoiding eye contact with an aggressive-looking transvestite. I can’t help but feel that this trip has begun appropriately. We’re in New York to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the world’s most notorious outlaw road race, the Cannonball Run – a 2900-mile no-rules dash from New York to Los Angeles via the fastest, least policed route known to lunacy. Our guide is Brock Yates Jr, son of the event’s founder and CAR’s link to its nefarious competitors. Even in the early stages of our correspondence, he’d warned: ‘Cops, jails and court summons are all part of the journey.’ Exciting when read from an office in Peterborough; disturbing when realised in a New York police station. But before we can meet up with Jr – a veteran of the first run in 1971 – we have to resolve this terrorism business.

Snapper Mark Bramley has accidentally chosen the same parking place as last May’s failed car bomber for a photo stop, which explains our prompt removal and subsequent interrogation. Employing a hammed-up British accent I apologise profusely by saying ‘I apologise profusely’ while trying desperately to say things a terrorist wouldn’t. After an hour Officer Valleccio concedes. I am not a terrorist. Our Dodge Challenger will not be torn apart and searched. We won’t be spending the night with an angry cross-dresser. Things are getting better. Or less worse. We drive timidly forth.

The combination of recent imprisonment and torrential rain tethers the Challenger’s 5.7-litre V8 to four-cylinder eco mode during our trudge south to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. After being outwitted by the car’s sat-nav four times, we arrive at our gently psychedelic motel five hours later than anticipated, sleep, wake, eat breakfasts the same size and weight as our own heads and head to Brock Jr’s.

Creeping into what the nav claims is our destination, I become abundantly aware that I have no idea what Jr looks like. We’ve only talked on the phone. So when I see the giant tattooed man exactly twice my size wearing a sleeveless denim jacket, work boots and cut-off jeans I’m a little surprised. He’s feeding a Pitbull. I wind down the window, assume my now well-versed charmingly-befuddled-Brit act and ask if he’s Brock Yates Jr. ‘Nope – wanna gimme your ride?’ I laugh nervously, hoping the question isn’t rhetorical. ‘He’s one house up, buddy. You boys sure you need that ride?’

The sight of a regular-looking man outside the house next door is a relief, even if he is laughing at me. ‘Not doing too well in the US, huh?’ says Brock, dressed in shorts, trainers and a polo shirt while daughter, Leda, clings tenaciously to his leg. Jr was 14 when his father and co-conspirators, Steve Smith and the late Jim Williams, conceived and completed the first Cannonball in a Dodge Custom Van.

‘I wasn’t old enough to drive so I was on the lookout for cops and gas stations – an essential job in the ’70s. There were plenty of the former,  ??but less of the latter, and our van was bad on gas. But watching America change constantly through the windscreen while my father sped across country as fast as it’d go was a fantastic adventure. I guess I was infected from an early age.’ Which explains why he turned road trips into a living. ‘I run the Tire Rack One Lap of America, which is an endurance road trip around the USA stopping at the country’s key racetracks. Think Cannonball Run minus the jail sentences. Well, fewer jail sentences…’

It’s with speed born of experience that Brock installs a selection of gadgets to the Challenger to help smooth passage to the west coast – a CB radio, radar detector, his own Garmin sat-nav and a large bag of Beef Jerky – which, save for steak, fries and eggs, is all Brock ever eats in my company. Mark and I are ushered to our quarters. I’m up front, Mark’s in the rear, along with my luggage (two factory-fit 12-inch Kicker subwoofers hog the boot). ‘I’ll drive. Off to my Dad’s in Wyoming, right?’ Right. CAR’s Cannonball has begun.

‘Damn, this thing sure moves!’ Brock is not employing eco mode. Due to my own fear and incompetence, it’s the first time that anyone’s given the Challenger a good drubbing since collection. At the first sight of open highway on Route 15 he stamps on the throttle – after a dramatic pause, the auto ’box kicks down, then 400lb ft drags the car forward with indignant, mass-defying thrust. ‘Jesus – not bad, Chrysler,’ says Brock, shouting over the vociferous Mopar exhaust.

Our fun is short-lived. Cruising in triple figures, a profoundly irritating noise starts coming out of one of the flashing electronic boxes: the radar detector. ‘Shit – cops,’ says Brock. The CB crackles into life: ‘County mounty up ahead. Watch your back, little red Challenger.’ Did a man in giant American truck really just say that? Have I been beamed into the Convoy dimension? I don’t care. This is too delicious. ‘We should get off the interstate,’ Brock mutters. I’m grinning like a tit.

On Route 390, we begin an impromptu tour of the sort of small towns only their inhabitants have heard of. Each pocket of civilisation has its own increasingly questionable claim to fame: ‘Home to America’s Longest-Running Brewery’; ‘Our Mine Fire’s Been Burnin’ Since ’48’; ‘Hosting The 2010 Little League World Series…’

We draw into Brock Senior’s small, softly antiqued hometown, precisely in the middle of nowhere, 360 miles later. His long driveway suggests success. More so the mansion and carriage house full of historic IndyCars, midget racers and the Dodge Challenger that he used for the 1972 and 1975 Cannonball Runs, which is the reason we’re in one now. It was the only car he used twice. With clarity and economy, Mark summarises my thoughts: ‘Holy f*ck.’

Following two colossal Great Danes, Brock walks outside: ‘Cool car, fellas – reminds me of mine. Want the tour?’ Go on then.

‘This is the Cannonball Challenger I used. Its best time was in ’72 when I was riding with Bud Stanner and Bob Brown: 37 hours 26 minutes. That’s about a 79mph average. Not bad, huh? We did a bunch of stuff to it for the trip – big fuel cell in the trunk so we could go longer without stopping for gas, there’s a cellphone and CB fitted, I got a Halda Speed Pilot point-to-point timer and a pair of Scheelk bucket seats, too. Oh, and we replaced the fogs with aircraft landing lights. It’s kinda important to see who and what’s in front of you when you’re running real hard.’ I titter with juvenile excitement – the chances of seeing a car this over-endowed with awesomeness stand at comfortably long odds. ‘Ah, good – Steve’s showed up,’ says Brock.

Steve Smith, ex-colleague of Brock during his tenure as a writer for Car & Driver magazine and co-founder of the Cannonball – or Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash to give it its official title – is a fellow Wyoming, NY resident. Dressed in black wearing contemporary jeans, Steve is an immensely affable man who speaks in dense, well-planned sentences, occasionally pausing and wringing his hands to summon old memories.

‘So, you guys wanna know the truth about the Cannonball? It all started ’cause of a couple of arguments. Firstly, Brock and I always used to argue with the tech guys on Car & Driver about what makes a good car. They used to go by numbers and specs; we went on what they drove like on public roads. They said we weren’t out there for enough miles to really test cars and we thought we were. Driving coast-to-coast would settle the score.

‘Then there was the argument most right-thinking motorists had with the government about the double-nickel [55mph] speed limit on interstates, which they threatened to implement in ’71 and eventually did a year later after the first gas crisis in ’72. With cars built to go faster and drivers able to do so safely, it was ridiculous. GM cars were tested at 80mph and Pontiacs to 70mph in the ’70s, so the machinery was capable. The authorities were basically saying we weren’t. Finally, there was the argument that Brock and I had during what he called his ‘Torque and Recoil’ weekends – high-powered cars and high-powered rifles – about whether it was possible. There was only one way to find out.’

Filled with inspiration and continental lager, I request some high-speed driving tips – tomorrow we’ll be driving west from the Cannonball’s original start line at the Red Ball parking garage, Manhattan, for 36 straight hours. Brock Jr, Mark and I plan on neither dithering nor encountering more police stations.

‘It’s not about plugging a radar detector into the dash and putting the hammer down. It’s the art of looking like you’re tied to a post when you’re actually doing 80. Or more. But whatever you’re in, you can’t outrun the police radio. Don’t use your turn signals – they’re a beacon for the troopers,’ says Smith. Yates continues: ‘If you’re gonna run hard, run silent and run deep.’ I have no idea what he means, but it sounds incredibly cool. Steve adds: ‘Oh, and if you’re feeling sleepy, eat some Doritos. No man can sleep eating Doritos.’ With that, all parties retire to bed.

Over breakfast the following morning, Brock’s wife, Pamela – played by Farrah Fawcett in the Cannonball Run film – casually tells us about the time she pretended to be a patient in the back of a fake TransCon MediVan ambulance that entered the 1979 event. After being driven for over 2000 miles by Brock, stuntman Hal Needham and a young radiologist called Lyle Royer who’d been recruited for added authenticity, the van broke down near Palm Desert, California. Needham conscripted an unladen lorry to transport the van, but there was no way of loading it on to the trailer. Unperturbed, he simply found a dirt mound, charged at it and launched the van onto the lorry’s bed. ‘He hit it perfectly. Hal paid the driver and off we went.’

Goodbyes are exchanged, we gas up, replenish jerky stocks and I buy a jelly sweet in the shape of a strawberry, which, it transpires, is actually an air freshener. We have to force the square peg of an interview with Oscar Koveleski – 1971 Cannonball veteran and founding member of the semi-spoof Polish Racing Drivers of America – and arrival at the Red Ball 350 miles away, into the round hole of a day. Brock punches it, agreeing to change drivers after every tank of gas despite his passion for driving the Dodge.
Thus far, the Challenger has demonstrated remarkable poise, despatching over 600 Interstate miles with relative dignity. The whole of America is in this car – unapologetically crass, massive and oddly charming. Despite the lowered suspension, meatier Mopar anti-roll bars and low-profile tyres, it steadfastly refuses to corner. And the B-pillars are outrageously intrusive on visibility. And the giant speaker system makes you look like a crack dealer. And the plastics smell like sick. But the styling’s something to treasure, and it goes like a pensioner’s terrier. For a jaunt like this, you need nothing more.

Guided by Jr, we drive due south east to Scranton, PA, branching off onto smaller and smaller side roads until civilisation vanishes completely into northern New York State’s thick forest. Making a poor effort to disguise the previous evening’s excess, I hide in the back and sleep until my shift.

‘Jesus Christ!’ shouts Brock. I awake with an undignified snort. Two geriatric pick-ups have hauled themselves in front of us with no regard for our 90mph haste, forcing Brock to pull the car to a near stop a few inches away from their rusty chrome bumper. The Jerky cops it, but the car survives. ‘Man, you’ve got to be so careful on these back roads. People just don’t pay attention anymore,’ says Jr. ‘It’s exactly why you couldn’t have a Cannonball today – even the small roads are car parks, and if they’re empty people just pull out. No mirrors or signalling. Y’know, there was only one crash on the Cannonball [the all-girl Right-Bra Racing Team in 1972] and there were no major injuries. There would be hundreds if you did it now.’

Startled into consciousness, I notice a sign suggesting we’re four miles from Carbondale. The town crawls into view and we turn into the race shop owned by Oscar’s friend, Jack Deren. Partially expired, I tumble inside.

Koveleski’s wit, sharpness and ability to heckle run so many rings around the rest of us it’s a wonder he doesn’t pass out from the centrifugal force. His mind truly betrays his age, even though he refuses to give a number. An ex-Can-Am racer, owner of model car mail-order business Auto World and self-titled godfather of the Polish Racing Drivers Association, Oscar ran in the 1971 event (see left). In a thick New York accent, he tells us about his steed.

‘We used a Chevrolet Sportvan for all the fuel tanks, see – we weren’t stopping for gas like those other suckers. We had five 55-gallon drums of 130-octane fuel in the back, which would last us 4000 miles, and we were only going 2900.  We used Bendix aircraft pumps to get the fuel in the motor, heavy-duty wheels and Goodyear tyres to take the weight. There were beds in there, too, and seats to carry extra passengers.’ With a wink, he adds: ‘You never know, right? But I purposefully left putting the van together to other people so I could kick their ass when it broke.’

His thoughts on our Cannonball mule? ‘You’re gonna get arrested. It’s far too red.’ With that, we leave for New York. Despite our agreement, Brock drives for a second tank due to my irrational fear of the NYPD. Cue 130 uneventful miles until we arrived at the Red Ball, where we find 1979 Cannonball vet John Harrison (see left), waiting to drop the metaphorical chequered flag. Naturally, there are burnouts. It is on.

Brock screams through the city, charting an impossible route through back streets, lunging into spaces and disapproving of New York’s cab driver’s with vehement anger. Within far less time than it should take we’re on the New Jersey turnpike, off the New Jersey turnpike and onto the I78. A gas stop, more jerky and an oleaginous energy drink later and it’s my turn helming. ‘Nice Challenger, son,’ crackles the CB as I overtake a truck. ‘Reminds me of my Hemi ’Cuda. Safe travellin’.’ I gradually put on speed – 90, 100, 110 – shedding traffic with reckless disdain. Brock offers illicit driving tips throughout. ‘Stay behind this guy, there might be a cop on that ridge. Overtake two lanes away from the minivan – if they notice your speed they’ll call 911.’ Towns fling themselves behind the car – Clinton, Jonestown, Monessen – and we burst into Ohio.

At 3am the energy drink slowly wears off, along with the novelty of high-speed driving. Lights from roadside service stations begin to drag, along with my speed. Steve had warned me about the hallucinations. With the hypnotic visuals, heating on full and increasingly lingering pace it feels like I’m driving through a lava lamp. I try the Smith Dorito tactic. Delicious. Ineffectual. The decision to tilt my head back as much as possible and simultaneously speed up to 120mph isn’t wholly illogical – I’ll be able to relax my eyes while still being able to see and cover good time. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when Brock pounds his hand against the dashboard shouting ‘TRUCK!’ There is literally no way I can avoid a crash…

 

 

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