Sayyaaf
Autotechnik Ace
The first part is a surprize 
Ferrari claims that each curve and every surface on the new 458 Italia has been designed by engineers to manage the airflow. But I suspect its sublime shape is mostly down to the artists at Pininfarina, whose flair is back with a vengeance. This is the prettiest car to wear the prancing horse badge for 30 years. Maybe longer than that.
It came to my house last weekend and I spent a great deal of time looking at it, partly because that’s half its appeal but mostly because it was stuck in my drive, marooned by the last of the snow.
On Sunday evening, though, the roads appeared to be safe enough so I settled into the driver’s seat, adjusted the wheel so that it was nearly in the right place — that’s as good as it ever gets in an Italian car — and set off for a drive in what’s likely to be the most impressive car from 2010.
Immediately, there was a problem. Ferrari has worked out that if you change gear with paddles behind the steering wheel, then there really isn’t space back there for traditional stalks as well. They have therefore been ditched, and that sounds a good idea.
But it isn’t, because the buttons to operate the lights, the indicators and the wipers are now on the steering wheel, along with the usual knobs that start the engine and adjust the traction control system.
This doesn’t work. When you are travelling in a straight line, the left indicator button is on the left-hand side and that’s fine. But when you are going round a corner, the left indicator button is on the right. And it gets worse because at night, when a car is coming the other way, you have to fumble around to find the dimmer switch, which, if you are going round a corner at the time, is where you’d left the button for the wipers.
So, there you are, blinding oncoming drivers, with your left indicator on, turning right, and with the wipers going ten to the dozen because you turned them on accidentally while looking for the dimmer switch, and now you can’t find the button to turn them off.
It gets worse, because beyond the wheel is a normal rev counter flanked by two TV screens. The one on the left tells you all sorts of things you never need to know, such as how fast your last lap was, while the one on the right is either a speedo or a sat nav. But not both at the same time.
So when it’s showing a map, you have no idea how fast you are going, which means you are now turning left, indicating right, wiping your clean window, dazzling oncoming drivers and doing two miles an hour because you’re going past a speed camera and — because you’re in a cacophonous Ferrari — it sounds like you might be doing 30.
And all of this is down to that flappy-paddle gearbox, which, if you leave it in automatic mode, swaps cogs every second and a half. It does so very smoothly and very fast, but unfortunately each time this happens the exhaust changes its tune. It sounds, then, as you bumble along, as if you’re warming up an orchestra with your foot.
Of course, all of these things are to be expected in a thoroughbred. It’s the price you pay for the majesty. The majesty that I would unleash when I reached the Fosse Way.
It didn’t happen. I switched the gearbox into manual mode, turned the traction control to its race setting and let slip the eight cylindrical dogs of war. And, immediately, the back end went into a terrifying fishtail. The ice hadn’t gone. And as the darkness came, it was getting worse. So I turned round and tiptoed home.
It’d be easy at this point simply to make the rest of the column up. I’m pretty damn sure the new 562bhp engine and Ferrari’s extraordinary ability to make a chassis sing will conspire to make the £169,545 price tag seem the bargain of the century.
But I won’t. Ferrari has cocked up in the past — remember the Mondial? — so I won’t assume anything. I’ll get the car back when the weather improves, let you know what’s what then and move on at this point to the Mégane Renaultsport 250 Cup.
I’m sorry if this is a disappointment. Trust me, it was worse for me because, having got home in the Ferrari, I had to leave it there and switch to what in essence is a bright yellow hatchback that I just knew would be awful.
Renault’s various hot hatchbacks are all aimed at someone I’ve never met. I don’t even know if he exists.
On a racetrack they are ludicrously good fun, with their plastic windows and their roll cages and their raucous engines. But do you have a racetrack? And if you do, would you choose to go round it in a French car with front-wheel drive? No.
The whole point of a hot hatchback is that it can do everything. It is supposed to be fast and fun but it is also supposed to be reliable, spacious, practical and cheap to mend. I draw your attention at this point to the Volkswagen Golf GTI and the Ford Focus RS.
Hot Renaults are fast and fun but they are not practical — not when they have a roll cage in the back and five-point harnesses instead of seatbelts, at any rate. And they are not reliable either. A recent survey found the Mégane had the worst MoT failure rate of any car.
So, no. I didn’t want to drive the Mégane 250. And I especially didn’t want to drive it when I could have been in a Ferrari 458. It would shake my teeth out. It would deafen me. It would be stupid and everyone would think I was a yobbo.
But here comes the however. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not noisy, there is no roll cage, the windows are made from glass and while the stripped-out and lightened Cup version I drove didn’t have many luxuries, or sat nav, it did have a radio, as well as optional iPod connectivity and Recaro seats that hug you like a supermodel. And it was, despite the hideous yellow paint, extremely good-looking.
Best of all, though, it was not uncomfortable. In fact, it was so not uncomfortable that even on the Oxford ring road, ravaged by the ice and resembling the surface of the moon as a result, my wife managed to apply her make-up as we drove along. And she only poked her eye out once.
Speed? Well it has a turbocharged 2-litre engine that develops 247 horsepower and that sounds impressive. The performance figures suggest impressiveness as well. But in reality it feels quite ordinary. Muscular rather than zingy. Solid rather than exciting.
It’s the same story with the handling. You have electric power steering and a front differential but there’s never really a sense they’re fighting to control untamable forces of nature. It just feels like a jolly nice car.
Drawbacks? Well, there are far too many electrical appliances, such as tyre pressure monitoring, that you just know will break after five minutes. And the view out of the back is virtually non-existent. But it’s not so bad that, as I drove into London, I couldn’t see that right behind was a Golf GTI.
And that’s what got me thinking. Plainly, Renault has decided the new hot Mégane should be more grown-up. More focused on every day and less on the once-in-a-blue-moon track day. In short, Renault has made it more boring, which means it now has to be viewed as a rival for the Golf and the Ford.
And I’m sorry but it doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s just as nice to drive, but you’d have to be a few bars short of full inflation to look at two identical products and select the one you know will go wrong all the time.
THE CLARKSOMETER
Mégane Renaultsport 250 Cup
Engine 1998cc, four cylinders, turbo
Power 247bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque 251 lb ft @ 3000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.1sec
Top speed 156mph
Fuel / CO2 33.6mpg / 195g/km
Road tax band J (£215 a year)
Price £22,467
On sale Now
CLARKSON'S VERDICT
She isn’t as wild as she pretends
Ferrari claims that each curve and every surface on the new 458 Italia has been designed by engineers to manage the airflow. But I suspect its sublime shape is mostly down to the artists at Pininfarina, whose flair is back with a vengeance. This is the prettiest car to wear the prancing horse badge for 30 years. Maybe longer than that.
It came to my house last weekend and I spent a great deal of time looking at it, partly because that’s half its appeal but mostly because it was stuck in my drive, marooned by the last of the snow.
On Sunday evening, though, the roads appeared to be safe enough so I settled into the driver’s seat, adjusted the wheel so that it was nearly in the right place — that’s as good as it ever gets in an Italian car — and set off for a drive in what’s likely to be the most impressive car from 2010.
Immediately, there was a problem. Ferrari has worked out that if you change gear with paddles behind the steering wheel, then there really isn’t space back there for traditional stalks as well. They have therefore been ditched, and that sounds a good idea.
But it isn’t, because the buttons to operate the lights, the indicators and the wipers are now on the steering wheel, along with the usual knobs that start the engine and adjust the traction control system.
This doesn’t work. When you are travelling in a straight line, the left indicator button is on the left-hand side and that’s fine. But when you are going round a corner, the left indicator button is on the right. And it gets worse because at night, when a car is coming the other way, you have to fumble around to find the dimmer switch, which, if you are going round a corner at the time, is where you’d left the button for the wipers.
So, there you are, blinding oncoming drivers, with your left indicator on, turning right, and with the wipers going ten to the dozen because you turned them on accidentally while looking for the dimmer switch, and now you can’t find the button to turn them off.
It gets worse, because beyond the wheel is a normal rev counter flanked by two TV screens. The one on the left tells you all sorts of things you never need to know, such as how fast your last lap was, while the one on the right is either a speedo or a sat nav. But not both at the same time.
So when it’s showing a map, you have no idea how fast you are going, which means you are now turning left, indicating right, wiping your clean window, dazzling oncoming drivers and doing two miles an hour because you’re going past a speed camera and — because you’re in a cacophonous Ferrari — it sounds like you might be doing 30.
And all of this is down to that flappy-paddle gearbox, which, if you leave it in automatic mode, swaps cogs every second and a half. It does so very smoothly and very fast, but unfortunately each time this happens the exhaust changes its tune. It sounds, then, as you bumble along, as if you’re warming up an orchestra with your foot.
Of course, all of these things are to be expected in a thoroughbred. It’s the price you pay for the majesty. The majesty that I would unleash when I reached the Fosse Way.
It didn’t happen. I switched the gearbox into manual mode, turned the traction control to its race setting and let slip the eight cylindrical dogs of war. And, immediately, the back end went into a terrifying fishtail. The ice hadn’t gone. And as the darkness came, it was getting worse. So I turned round and tiptoed home.
It’d be easy at this point simply to make the rest of the column up. I’m pretty damn sure the new 562bhp engine and Ferrari’s extraordinary ability to make a chassis sing will conspire to make the £169,545 price tag seem the bargain of the century.
But I won’t. Ferrari has cocked up in the past — remember the Mondial? — so I won’t assume anything. I’ll get the car back when the weather improves, let you know what’s what then and move on at this point to the Mégane Renaultsport 250 Cup.
I’m sorry if this is a disappointment. Trust me, it was worse for me because, having got home in the Ferrari, I had to leave it there and switch to what in essence is a bright yellow hatchback that I just knew would be awful.
Renault’s various hot hatchbacks are all aimed at someone I’ve never met. I don’t even know if he exists.
On a racetrack they are ludicrously good fun, with their plastic windows and their roll cages and their raucous engines. But do you have a racetrack? And if you do, would you choose to go round it in a French car with front-wheel drive? No.
The whole point of a hot hatchback is that it can do everything. It is supposed to be fast and fun but it is also supposed to be reliable, spacious, practical and cheap to mend. I draw your attention at this point to the Volkswagen Golf GTI and the Ford Focus RS.
Hot Renaults are fast and fun but they are not practical — not when they have a roll cage in the back and five-point harnesses instead of seatbelts, at any rate. And they are not reliable either. A recent survey found the Mégane had the worst MoT failure rate of any car.
So, no. I didn’t want to drive the Mégane 250. And I especially didn’t want to drive it when I could have been in a Ferrari 458. It would shake my teeth out. It would deafen me. It would be stupid and everyone would think I was a yobbo.
But here comes the however. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not noisy, there is no roll cage, the windows are made from glass and while the stripped-out and lightened Cup version I drove didn’t have many luxuries, or sat nav, it did have a radio, as well as optional iPod connectivity and Recaro seats that hug you like a supermodel. And it was, despite the hideous yellow paint, extremely good-looking.
Best of all, though, it was not uncomfortable. In fact, it was so not uncomfortable that even on the Oxford ring road, ravaged by the ice and resembling the surface of the moon as a result, my wife managed to apply her make-up as we drove along. And she only poked her eye out once.
Speed? Well it has a turbocharged 2-litre engine that develops 247 horsepower and that sounds impressive. The performance figures suggest impressiveness as well. But in reality it feels quite ordinary. Muscular rather than zingy. Solid rather than exciting.
It’s the same story with the handling. You have electric power steering and a front differential but there’s never really a sense they’re fighting to control untamable forces of nature. It just feels like a jolly nice car.
Drawbacks? Well, there are far too many electrical appliances, such as tyre pressure monitoring, that you just know will break after five minutes. And the view out of the back is virtually non-existent. But it’s not so bad that, as I drove into London, I couldn’t see that right behind was a Golf GTI.
And that’s what got me thinking. Plainly, Renault has decided the new hot Mégane should be more grown-up. More focused on every day and less on the once-in-a-blue-moon track day. In short, Renault has made it more boring, which means it now has to be viewed as a rival for the Golf and the Ford.
And I’m sorry but it doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s just as nice to drive, but you’d have to be a few bars short of full inflation to look at two identical products and select the one you know will go wrong all the time.
THE CLARKSOMETER
Mégane Renaultsport 250 Cup
Engine 1998cc, four cylinders, turbo
Power 247bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque 251 lb ft @ 3000rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.1sec
Top speed 156mph
Fuel / CO2 33.6mpg / 195g/km
Road tax band J (£215 a year)
Price £22,467
On sale Now
CLARKSON'S VERDICT
She isn’t as wild as she pretends
