Bad cars usually lack one vital ingredient – soul. They’re built by accountants, not a man with a passion
Read reviews of the 25 worst cars Jeremy has drivenThe cars you will find on this page do not necessarily cost more than Caribbean islands, they are not unduly thirsty and none has a steering wheel that falls off every day or killer scorpions in the seat fabric.
Some are even quite spacious and practical and mostly they emit very small carbon dioxides. This, of course, makes little difference to the weather but does give you a warm glow of sanctimonious pride at least.
However, I don’t like them and, as often as not, there’s a very good reason for that . . .
It’s not that hard to make a car. You go to a company that makes brakes for the brakes, to a company that makes glass for the windows and to a company that makes seats for the seats. Then you get a subsidy from the Malaysians to clear a bit of jungle, pop up a factory, employ some locals to nail all your pieces together and Bob’s your uncle.
Making a car, then, is like following one of Jamie Oliver’s recipes. You take so many eggs, cook the cress for so long, drizzle so much jus onto the finished product and yum yum, you have a delicious and nutritious dinner for four.
There is, however, a small problem. I have followed many of Jamie’s recipes over the years and I have ended up with something that looks nothing like the incredible creation in the pictures. What’s more, when I serve it to guests, it usually makes them vomit copiously all over the floor.
I’m willing to bet that if Gordon, or Anton, or Marco, or Heston were to follow the same recipe using the same ingredients and the same utensils, the guests would drown in their own dribble long before they’d picked up a knife and fork.
And this is the thing with cars. The new Tata Nano, that 40p commuter runabout launched in India recently, has all the right parts. There are wheels, windscreen wipers, an engine (sort of) and places for people to sit. But do you want one? I don’t. In fact, I’d rather kiss Nicholas Witchell. With tongues.
And it’s not a problem restricted to cheap cars either. Other cars I don’t want include the Mazda2, the Subaru WRX, the BMW 3-series, the Mercedes GL, the Vauxhall Vectra, the Porsche Boxster, anything with a Seat badge, and even the £117,500 Bentley Flying Spur.
The Bentley may tick all the boxes. It may be the fastest four-door saloon car in the world and it may have exquisitely machined heater vent knobs. What’s more, it uses many of the same parts as the Volkswagen Phaeton, a car I like very much indeed. And yet it lacks the vital final ingredient. Call it what you will: flair, élan, passion. It’s not there. It is a car with no soul.
There’s a very good reason for this. Volkswagen made the Continental GT because it wanted to make a good large car. And having done that, at very great expense, the marketing people and the accounts department obviously pointed out that a few more could be sold if a cheaply reengineered saloon version was added to the lineup. The Flying Spur, then, was created not to be brilliant. But as a sop to the economies of scale. It was built to make money. And that never works.
Why do you not lie awake at night yearning for the day when you can own a Hyundai? Simple. Because Hyundais are not made to plunge their hand into your pants. Only to plunge their hands into your bank account. It’s the same story with the Tata Nano, and the Vauxhall Vectra, and the BMW 3-series, and the Mercedes GL. All the cars you don’t like and don’t want were made, like white goods, solely to make money.
As a general rule, Japanese cars have no magic “want one” factor. Except for various Hondas, which do. And it’s no coincidence that Honda was started by one man with an engineering vision while Toyota was started by a committee to make Japan rich. Subarus, for God’s sake, are made by Fuji Heavy Industries.
Ooh, the romance. I’d like to bet the top brass don’t even know they make cars.
Ever wondered why so many people genuinely love Jaguars and why Lexuses are always thought of as being a bit dreary? It’s because Jaguar was started by Sir William Lyons, who had a vision, and Lexus was started in a meeting driven by PowerPoint presentations and accounting principles.
And don’t think that the days of Lyons are over. You need only look at the Bugatti Veyron to know that mad, dream cars are still steamrollering their way through the profit-and-loss accounts. Forced into production by Volkswagen’s boss, Ferdinand Piëch, who wanted to make a car that did 400kph, it costs almost a million quid to buy. But it costs Volkswagen nearly three times that much to make. You can feel this when you drive it. You can even sense it when you turn on the wipers, because you’re using a stalk that cost £4,000. Very nearly as much as an entire Perodua Kelisa.
Other modern cars that still have soul where you’d expect to find nothing but expense are the Mercedes CLS, that swooping four-door coupé-lookalike that seems to have no place at all in a lineup built on granite and common sense. So what’s it doing there?
Simple. A Mercedes designer was doodling away one night wondering what a Jaguar might look like if Mercedes were to make such a thing. His boss saw it and the rest is history.
Then there’s the Golf GTI. Created back in the late 1970s by a small team of enthusiasts who were fiddling about putting big engines into little cars, it was ruined over the years by the marketing department who thought that a good badge would act like yummy gravy if poured over a poor car. But then, with the new one, they asked the engineers to break out their slide rules, and put the magic back. The result is a fantastic car.
What fascinates me about this simple principle most of all, though, is that sometimes soul can be like chilli sauce. Pour enough over the mix and it’ll mask the fact that underneath you’re driving around in the automotive equivalent of two dead rats.
This brings me on to the Ford Mustang. It’s a terrible car. Bouncy, underbraked, nowhere near as fast as it should be and equipped with a live rear axle. Something that went out of fashion at about the same time as the Bailey bridge.
Ford argued that it had fitted museum technology because that’s what America’s drag-racing fraternity had asked for. I see, so you wreck a car’s handling and ride simply to keep half a dozen fat men in Kentucky happy. Sure, I believe you. And the decision had nothing to do with the fact that live axles cost 4p whereas more modern alternatives don’t.
Anyway. None of this matters, because whenever I see a Mustang I’m filled with a sometimes uncontrollable urge to buy one. I know the stripes are silly, I know the wheels are slightly wider than is strictly necessary and I realise the big bulge on the bonnet is as laughable as the hosepipe attachment Robert Plant used to sport in his pants.
I’m also aware that the seats are made from UHT leather, that the dash is made from materials that Lego would reject, that it can be beaten off the lights by a Golf (cart) and that in England such a car would mark me out as someone who in pubs says, “I’ll take a Bud,” because secretly I want to be American.
And yet the feeling persists. Maybe it’s the badge and all that Bullitt nonsense. Maybe it’s the style. It is a good-looking car. But mostly it’s the fact it’s the only Ford made today with rear-wheel drive. That shows that beneath all the rubbish it was designed by someone who cares.
In every way, it’s worse than a dull-as-ditchwater Kia Rio. But because it was plainly created by an enthusiast it has a heart and a soul. That’s why I’d buy a Mustang and why, even if my dog’s life depended on it, I wouldn’t buy a Rio.
So, hopefully, when you read this round-up of the cars I’ve liked least since 2003 you’ll see the thing they have in common – or rather the thing they haven’t got.
We list the specification and price that applied on the date of Clarkson’s original review for each car and indicate whether a model has been discontinued. Current prices are correct at time of going to press (source Newspress). The fuel consumption figures are based on the combined urban and extra urban cycle
Jeremy Clarkson's greatest hits, "The 25 best cars I've driven" 
