Sunday, July 08, 2007

Car News

1)The new Fiat 500 is not an iPod.
2)Top Gear has chewed up some salt flats in Botswana. I wish they wouldn't do this. I like the show but real wilderness is increasingly hard to find.
3)The Ford Mondeo is the best car in the world. I've known this since I hired one in Scotland at New Year - and, trust me, I've driven some pretty ritzy cars. Neil Lyndon agrees with me. What the Top Gear guys always miss out is the obvious truth that it's quite easy to build an Aston Martin or even a Porsche. What is required of such cars is limited, as is the competition. Building a cheapish saloon, however, is fiendishly difficult, requiring the resolution of dozens of conflicting demands. The Mondeo is the best, a masterpiece, one of the great consumer products of our time. I hate myself for not buying one.

4 comments:

  1. Mr Clarkson liked it as well:

    "...a masterpiece. Every single time I drove one I emerged from the experience thinking, 'Why doesn’t everyone own one of these?' It was just so simple. A perfect poached egg, on a perfect piece of toast.

    "It handled beautifully, it was surprisingly fast, it was roomy and practical, and if you actually took away the familiarity it was also extremely good looking. Much better than a BMW 3-series, or a Mercedes C-class. Better too than the Jaguar X-type that it spawned."

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  2. Ah thanks, Gordon, I didn't know that.

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  3. Bryan, do you go along with Gordon's assessment on the Mondeo? It was the Mondeo he was talking about, wasn't it?

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