HORNBY - ALIVE & STEAMING

And a Happy New Year to Nick Cole and all at Hornby :o)

Saturday/Sunday Telegraph=




Mine's a pint: virtual reality driving? Please...
(Filed: 31/12/2005)


You can't beat proper cars - and Scalextric, says James May

Every once in a while I come across a car that I am somehow unable to drive.

Some of them are simply incapacitated: my old Jaguar, for example, because the battery had always gone flat and, as the bonnet opened forwards and it lived in a garage three inches bigger than the car all round, the jump leads from another car would never quite reach. I had to employ a man to start it for me.

Then there are cars that are simply beyond contemplation. The Caterham Seven is one; a very exciting car but simply too embarrassing to be seen in. TVRs are off, because I can't remember how to open the doors, and while those Mitsubishi pick-ups might be quite useful, I just can't get the banjo music out of my head.

Other cars have been desirable and in perfect working order but have erected a psychological barrier between me and driving pleasure. The Model T Ford was one, because what you might imagine was the clutch pedal was actually the gear change.

The throttle was on the steering wheel and there were two other pedals that did something else unfamiliar. I spent a good hour learning all this in the safety of a car park, but on approaching some traffic lights on a real road, all the new-found knowledge suddenly evaporated and the owner was forced to seize a lever, the precise function of which now escapes me.

Fangio's 1950s Alfetta racing car was another. I drove this in the Goodwood Festival of Speed a couple of years ago and found the experience most unnerving.

The pedals and gearbox were all back to front, the thing was worth £5 million and the seat was upholstered in corduroy, which I felt obliged to explain to onlookers rather as I did the horse mural that used to be on my bathroom wall.

And now I discover that I can't drive the new Toyota Yaris. Can't quite explain why; I just can't. It would appear to be a very good car - my mother has the outgoing model and that was already a class leader, so presumably this one is a bit better.

It's very well made, spacious, it has a good ride and the digital speedo still floats in space in an intriguing way down a small tunnel on the facia. But I can't drive it.

I spent several hours in it yesterday, and I can honestly say I drove better the first time I went out in my mum's Vauxhall Cavalier 25 years ago.

I slurred gear changes, stalled continually, cocked-up simple manoeuvres, made a complete hash of my road positioning, carved people up and generally drove like early man in man's first car.

Why is this? I promise you there is nothing wrong with the Yaris; colleagues whom I trust have driven it and pronounced it a good thing. But for some reason I just don't, like, you know, relate to it, or however it is amateur psychoanalysts would put it. I don't mean that I merely dislike it; I mean that I truly can't work it properly.

Mind you, a mate of mine has been given one of those Nintenbox game things for Christmas, and on that I don't seem to be able to drive anything - even the original Ford Mustang, which is possibly the simplest car ever made.

He has the steering wheel thing that clamps to the coffee table, the pedals, and the gearstick. But it might as well be wired up to an Enigma machine for all the sense I can make of it.

I know it's rather tiresome when old people bang on about these modern driving games and how Scalextric was much better, but it was. Still is, in fact. A Scalextric car is one of the most rudimentary electro-mechanical devices known to man, and in reality not actually a car at all.

If you put electric motors and small wheels under scale models of famous buildings and raced them around a loop of plastic track, the fun would be undiminished.

Nobody would claim that Scalextric has anything to do with real driving. It's just a game loosely inspired by motor racing.

The trouble with these modern driving console things is that they purport to be realistic and, as Jeremy Clarkson proved last week on Top Gear, they simply aren't.

I know, for example, that on some games you can earn money through race success and buy a more powerful engine or whatever. But I also know that it's all just a digital trick dreamt up by some bloke in Japan. I don't want virtual reality driving - I want Scalextric or a real car.

And that's what I did for Christmas. I played Scalextric, then went out for a long blast in the old 911. And I was delighted to discover I could still do both.