Tēma: Top Gear & Fifth Gear & Grand Tour

Kopš: 04. Jul 2011

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Braucu ar: Lexus

Kopš: 28. Oct 2008

No: Rīga

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Braucu ar: e39 530d / Das Auto / GSXR 1000 K7

Kopš: 01. Dec 2002

No: Rīga

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"Volkswagen Jetta
By Jeremy Clarkson of The Sunday Times

Well done VW, it's the most boring car in history




At my old school, detention usually involved being asked to write a 1,000-word essay about the inside of a ping pong ball. So I’m well qualified to write about the new Volkswagen Jetta. Because I spent every Saturday afternoon for five years writing about the precise chemical breakdown of air, it’s a breeze to fill these pages with prose about what is unquestionably the most boring car in the whole of human history.

Even James May, my colleague from Top Gear, agrees. I spoke to him yesterday. “I’m driving the most boring car in the world,” I said, and though he’s known as Captain Slow and practises the art of what he calls Christian motoring, he said: “Oh, you must have a Jetta then.”

I wouldn’t mind if it were awful or ugly or spontaneously combusted every time there was a day in the week. That at least would make it characterful and interesting. But it does none of these things. It does nothing.

I can’t abide bores. There’s a man I meet every week — I shan’t say where in case he’s reading this — and never, not once, in four years has he been able to make a single story interesting. Even if he’d just been mugged by a gang of Terminators or gang raped by a rampaging swarm of goblins he’d still fail to bring the tale alive. And pretty soon you’d be wishing you were a horse; so you could fall asleep standing up.

I can’t be bored. I have no ability to deal with it. That’s why I can’t do church sermons, or Big Brother. It’s why I was so irritated by the game of squash in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and why I won’t go to America any more. Those two-hour queues for immigration are just killers.

It’s also why I’m fidgety and distracted today. Because I came to London yesterday in the Volkswagen Jetta, and tomorrow I must go home in it. Which will be like spending an hour in a coma.

I’d love to meet the man who styled the exterior, to find out if he’d done it as some sort of a joke. But mostly I’d like to meet the man who simply didn’t bother at all with the interior. Because looking at that dashboard gives you some idea of what it might be like to be dead.

It’s black. And so are the buttons, and so are the dials, and so are the carpets and so are the seats. To give you some idea of how dull and featureless life is in there, put a cardboard box over your head. And leave it there for 10 years.

Then there’s the engine. This is the 2 litre direct injection jobbie you find in various other VWs and Audis and it’s normally not bad. But like a bloke who could make a UFO encounter seem boring, the Jetta seems to suck all the life out of it.

It’s the same story with the ride and handling. It’s really not bad at all. But it’s hard to spot this when you are stuck in that vegetative no man’s land with a face that’s so numb you don’t even know you’re dribbling.

And now we arrive at the boot lid, which is supposed to boing up when you press a button on the key. But it can’t be bothered. It springs from the traps, rises about a foot and then just gives up.

There’s a similar lack of enthusiasm from the satellite navigation system. Every request is met with a shoulder-sagging teenage harrumph. Perhaps this is because the car’s made in Mexico: so it just wants to sit under a tree all day dozing.


Volkswagen itself was plainly bored to tears when trying to think of things to say about the car. So what you get in the press blurb is chapter and verse on the windscreen wipers, which apparently perform a number of tasks. Further investigation reveals these tasks to be 1) sitting still and 2) moving hither and thither clearing raindrops.

What I’m most interested in is why on earth this car was made in the first place, because it’s actually a Golf with a boot. Or to put it another way, a Golf that’s a bit uglier, a bit heavier, a bit slower, a bit less practical, a bit less economical and a lot more boring to drive. To paraphrase Mark Twain, then, it’s a good Golf ruined.

And yet the model I drove cost £18,500. And to that you must add another £1,200 for an automatic gearbox and £1,675 if you want leather upholstery instead of the Pleblon that comes as standard. I’d also go for the £13.99 “life hammer”, which is designed to be used to break the windows after an accident. But it could also be used by a passenger to hit you on the head when you start dribbling. Or as a tunnelling tool, like the rock hammer in The Shawshank Redemption.

Because believe me, being trapped inside a Jetta is just like being trapped in a 1930s jail. You really would want to escape, whatever the cost.

Anyway, my point is that the Jetta is a £21,000 car. So why not buy a bigger, better and (marginally) more interesting Passat instead?

Or why not save a few bob and buy a vastly superior Golf GTI? Or why not buy 2.1m penny chews? What really pisses me off about the Jetta is that Volkswagen is a company that makes the Bentley Continental and the Lamborghini Gallardo. It has the flair and the panache to make the Bugatti Veyron, and we know it can make a Golf saloon interesting because they’ve proved it with various Seats and Skodas.

But what they’ve come up with here is an automotive Belgium, Tim Henman with wheels. The inside of a ping pong ball. I therefore cannot recommend it to you in any way.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Volkswagen Jetta 2.0 SE FSI
Engine 1984cc, four cylinders
Power 148bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 147 lb ft @ 3500rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 34.4mpg (combined cycle)
CO2 197g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 9.2sec
Top speed 131mph
Price £16,625
Rating 1/5
Verdict So boring you want to die
"

[ Šo ziņu laboja Pauliic, 30 Dec 2011, 15:49:36 ]

Kopš: 28. Jun 2005

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30 Dec 2011, 16:28:03 yanks rakstīja:
sižets un ideja jau laba, bet kaut kā ar katru sēriju tie joki/negadījumi paliek arvien samakslotāki un nodrāztāki. klarksons vispār par mazu bērnu pataisījies. vai tiešam drīz būs pienākusi tā diena kad negribēsiues TG skatīties?!?

Kopš: 08. Jan 2007

No: Rīga

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Braucu ar: E92 M3, E30 318i, F11 535d

30 Dec 2011, 16:28:03 yanks rakstīja:
sižets un ideja jau laba, bet kaut kā ar katru sēriju tie joki/negadījumi paliek arvien samakslotāki un nodrāztāki. klarksons vispār par mazu bērnu pataisījies. vai tiešam drīz būs pienākusi tā diena kad negribēsiues TG skatīties?!?

Kopš: 07. Jun 2007

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[ Šo ziņu laboja barracuda, 30 Dec 2011, 19:33:31 ]

Kopš: 01. Dec 2002

No: Rīga

Ziņojumi: 8769

Braucu ar: 10, 101

Kopš: 10. Jun 2008

No: Rīga

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Braucu ar: neturbo subāru

Series Eighteen is starting January 29th 2012 according to Top Gear Magazine

Kopš: 07. Aug 2008

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Braucu ar: visu kas pagadās

Kopš: 04. Mar 2007

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Braucu ar: Volvo un Volvo

Kopš: 15. May 2002

No: Rīga

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Braucu ar: 2x(R6+LSD)

16 Jan 2012, 18:24:03 viez rakstīja:
TopGear žurnāls iznāks arī Latvijā Links

Kopš: 04. Mar 2007

Ziņojumi: 16792

Braucu ar: Volvo un Volvo

And then I got back to business. Small cars that I felt would be suitable for my daughter. A Mini? Well, yes, except it's not small, and, as a result, even the basic models need a 1.4-litre engine to move them about. And that was too large for our friend in Norwich, or possibly Frankfurt.

There's exactly the same problem with the baby Alfa and the Honda Jazz. The Fiat 500, then. The TwinAir is a car I like enormously, and its engine is small enough to keep the insurance companies happy. But here's the problem. You can have a Fiat 500. You can buy one for your child. Your child will like it very much. But it's my child we're talking about here, and I'm sorry, but it's just too small.

Think of it this way. If I asked you to drive into a lamp post at 50mph, would you choose to make the trip in a Mitsubishi Warrior pickup truck or a Fiat 500? Quite.

Eventually, after a great deal of research, I ended up settling on a Ford Fiesta. 1.2-litre engine. Tick. Bigger than most of its rivals. Tick. And, not that it really matters, better-looking, too. Not as good-looking, however, as it is now.

It's pretty good on the inside, too, because the Fiesta name is picked out in backlit red in the sills, and there's a satnav screen in the rear-view mirror. But by far and away the best thing about this car is this: it is gloriously slow. In a race from 0 to 60, it would be beaten by geology. Put your foot down in fifth at 50mph, and absolutely nothing happens.

This makes me priapic with joy.

So my daughter will be forced to drive about at the same speed as the slowest thing on the road. That'll be James May. And since he is stationary most of the time, either because he is letting someone out of a side turning or because he is lost and consulting a map, the chances of an accident are dramatically reduced.

Kopš: 04. Mar 2007

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Braucu ar: Volvo un Volvo

Kopš: 14. May 2002

Ziņojumi: 17407

Braucu ar: 500

Kopš: 12. Jun 2002

No: Rīga

Ziņojumi: 20374

Braucu ar: BMW 3GT, BMW 4Gran Coupe, Volvo V50 R-Design

Kopš: 01. Dec 2002

No: Rīga

Ziņojumi: 8769

Braucu ar: 10, 101

Kopš: 14. May 2002

Ziņojumi: 17407

Braucu ar: 500

Kopš: 14. May 2002

Ziņojumi: 17407

Braucu ar: 500

Kopš: 15. May 2002

No: Rīga

Ziņojumi: 22096

Braucu ar: 2x(R6+LSD)