Notes From the Hard Shoulder Read online

  'I know where you're coming from,' I said, grasping the nettle. 'We need to nail down a cohesive policy on European market penetration. The Vectra could be the business tool we need for more rapid response to client toner needs. I'll run it up the flagpole, see which way it blows.' He looked blank, but I guess he's got a lot on his plate.

  First impressions, as any on-the-road executive knows, count for a lot. I wear a company tie to build customer confidence; Vectra wears a purposeful, dynamic suit that picks up the Cavalier's baton (Vauxhall's words, those) and runs with it (mine). I couldn't help thinking it looks a bit like a Primera at the back and there are hints of Peugeot in the slightly tapered headlights. Identity is established with the chrome V sign on the grille; individuality is emphasised by two creases that flow up the bonnet and blend into the pointed door mirrors. I reckoned this was pure styling, but the Vauxhall rep swears it's like that for aerodynamic reasons.

  It's a bit bigger all round than my old Cav, too, giving vital gains in interior room, especially in the back. Overall, its more rounded shape strengthens the Vauxhall corporate look, as established by the Astras our account handlers use and Gav's Omega. Should make for an integrated-looking car park and solid corporate identity, for Vauxhall and for us.

  Vectra's aggressive go-ahead stance is consolidated with new suspension, based on subframes front and rear. Vauxhall's mission statement was a smoother ride, better handling and less noise, and a better chassis means less driver stress and better business readiness. I drove a competitor's Mondeo 16v, and it showed how my Cavalier has fallen behind with its jittery ride and soggy nose-led handling, especially with 120K on the clock.

  There's a full spectrum of engines, including a diesel (I ignored this, as it doesn't complement our sophisticated blue-chip technology image), four-cylinder petrols in 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0-litre capacities, and a 2.5-litre V6. There are hatch and saloon versions with all engines, and an estate is coming next autumn. I made a decisive decision to go for the 2.0 16v SRi hatch, the obvious replacement for my Cavalier and the car appropriate for my grade (18).

  It was lunchtime, so I worked my way gently into Vectra with a brief drive to the local McDonalds for ein quarter pounder mit cheese und a coffee (I picked up a bit of the language on the school exchange). It's immediately obvious that the interior is a big improvement over the Cav's – more rounded, softer looking, in keeping with the outside. The seats are better, offering two lumbar adjustments and introducing a height variable, but the wheel doesn't move. That's a shortcoming, because in my ideal seat position my knees are splayed a bit and the left one bangs on the cup holder. While we're at it, my coffee cup didn't fit that well, and it seems odd that Vauxhall didn't involve McDonalds in optimising cup-holder parameters.

  During my snatched in-car meal I assimilated more nice touches on the interior. The clock is linked to the RDS radio signal and is automatically changed when you drive into Europe or when we switch to summer time and is disseminated with radio and trip computer info via an in-dash display facility. The ventilation system is now by rotary knobs instead of sliders and my car had excellent optional air conditioning, which is an essential accessory in this weather – if you turn up at a customer's with wet armpits (highly likely in this easy-iron polyester shirt) then you might find yourself with a major disincentive in the agent/client interface which no amount of aftershave will rectify.

  Back on the road, I had a quick thrash to the autobahn. This engine is basically an ongoing development of my old car's, with Ecotec variable inlet manifolding for wider reaching torque access. It felt a bit slower than the Cavalier despite this. Vauxhall says it does 0-100kmh in 10 seconds, but I reckon I'd be able to beat that. What's more, I can work on my nought to sixties utilising the computer's stopwatch function, which records tenths of a second for this purpose. The Cav did it in eight, according to Car Magazine, and that figure needs to be kept in perspective: two seconds might seem immaterial now, but it'll seem like a long time when you're staring at the 'add toner' warning light on your photocopier control panel with 150 annual reports still to go.

  I'll be honest with you, this engine feels a bit old. At really low revs, say when pulling away gently, it grunts and grumbles worse than our fleet manager. It gets a bit rough at higher revs, too, and this becomes apparent on the usual motorway drag. Up to 70mph Vectra is nice 'n' relaxed, but at 70 I'd be doing my competitors a big favour. I work between 90 and the ton, and up there Vectra's engine introduces a bit of a boom to the cabin ambience equation. That's a pity, because wind noise is kept nicely subdued even at three figures and the tyres are quiet even on those Jerry-built concrete surfaces. Later, I had a quick go in the 1.8, and though it's basically the same it feels much nicer – smoother, quieter, more peppy. That's a grade 15 car, though.

  Sharp ridges, such as expansion joints, cause a bit of a clang but it's more a noise than a feeling. There's a grittiness in the suspension that complements the rough edge on the engine and spoils Vectra's composure, but overall the ride is like a good sales pitch – firm but compliant. Even at 120 the Vectra stayed stuck nicely on the road, only crosswinds interrupted by lorries causing a slight waywardness. Not so bad that I couldn't steer with my knees and use my hands for vital meeting preparation, though.

  But gains that are made on the motorway in time-management are lost if the car can't hack it on the winding stuff. First thing I noticed on a back-road blast was the pronounced castor effect of the steering, which snaps back to the straight ahead very smartly. This weights up the wheel in a turn, giving an impression of meatiness that isn't really there. In a fast bend the steering is more vague than you'd expect – in short, the wheel's writing cheques the front suspension can't honour.

  The good news, though, is that it's quicker-geared than the Cavalier, and this does as much as the air con to reduce the incidence of sweaty moments. The car is much better balanced, too. In a hard-charging corner the Cavalier would nose its way soggily to the edge of the road, demanding more lock which was then harder to wind off. Vectra is more neutral, and can be held squealing through long bends at the outside of the adhesion envelope, allowing maximisation of cornering forces at your disposal (my 2.0-litre was better here than the heavier and differently tyred V6). The gear-change is improved too, though it's still not best-case scenario with its rubbery feel and second ratio feels a bit too tall when powering out of tight turns, where the seat base also reveals an inability to manage a major sideways momentum situation. But compared with my Cavalier, vital seconds can be shaved off response times with Vectra, and it's those last few seconds that make the difference between you or someone else closing that sale.

  By the end of a hard day I had established a good, pro-active relationship with Vectra. It's more comfortable, roomier and makes a more dynamic executive statement than its predecessor. However, comparison with the Cavalier is not enough to confirm Vectra's business credentials.

  I decided to give it to Gav straight on a one-to-one basis. 'Gav,' I said, 'Vectra offers significant improvements over Cavalier but I don't think it moves the goalposts on the overall executive express playing field. Major problem identified is the engine; it's not at the cutting edge. We need to reassess Vectra in the light of a head-to-head comparative shakedown with major rivals with particular reference to Mondeo, Laguna and Xantia, to establish the way forward for most effective market penetration capability. We need to suck it and see.'

  And he said to me, 'Jim,' he said, 'you talk complete bollocks.'

  I'VE NEVER FELT SUCH A SPANNER

  Anyone who thinks that being a racing car mechanic is a swanky wheel-changing job doesn't know his arse from his elbow-jointed extension piece, and that includes me.

  There I was, no less a revered spannerist than James May, owner of an allegedly 99-piece chrome-vanadium socket set and best 'specials' bicycle builder of the fifth form, and I was holding a rag. If you were at Donington Park for round 12 of the BTCC you would, I hope, have noticed how brightly the
two silver A4 Quattros of Biela and Bintcliffe gleamed in the watery June sunshine.

  It probably didn't help that I arrived for my first day as an Audi pit technician, Saturday, precisely half a day late. By then, practice for the first race was over and there was nothing for it but to have lunch in the motorhome – pork fillets with veg and gravy followed by cheesecake, which was excellent. After an hour or so of digestive repose watching Le Mans on the motorhome telly, I finally entered the dark portal of the pits, hoping to have a look at some telemetry or perhaps join the discussion on tyre choice. That was when I was handed the duster and the bottle of wax. After I'd polished the cars, I washed a pile of alloy wheels. I completely missed the second practice session as I was too busy cleaning the garage floor.

  Still, the garage is a fascinating place, even when observed from all fours. There's the toolkit – drawer after drawer of beautiful stuff, with every last spanner, socket, ratchet and extension piece allocated a cut-out slot in a cosseting bed of foam. One corner is devoted to a huge, gleaming plinth on which, with the aid of computers, light beams and other black magic, minute adjustments to camber, toe-in and weight distribution can be made. Everything is absolutely spotless, thanks in some small part to me on this occasion.

  You should see underneath the car. I crawled under Biela's hoping for a quick nap, but was stunned into wakefulness by the cleanliness of everything. Even the floorpan is polished, the better to prevent dirt sticking to it and making the job of gearbox and engine changing messy. It's not like your road-going A4. There's no underseal for a start, and the alternator and power-steering pumps are driven from the rear diff rather than the engine, to preserve a few vital horsepower; less than half the engine's output is directed to the back, so they only sap that bit of it. That steering pump is an area of concern. The BTCC A4 is geared at a mere 0.9 turns lock-to-lock, and if the pump fails – as it had done a few weeks previously when a stone fouled the drive belt – then the driver is not strong enough to overcome the leverage of the unassisted wheel and ends up in the gravel, as Biela did.

  Dinner was roast turkey with all the ancillaries followed by jelly and ice cream, after which I retired to the hotel with the chaps. Now I thought Saturday nights in race season would pass in a stress-relieving riot of drinking, brawling, seducing and sword-fighting, but tonight it was just a few quiet pints in the bar and some talk of racing. That first practice session had been revealing; it was wet, and our boys, with the advantage of four-wheel drive and hence able to move off the dry racing line on to the slippery stuff for overtaking, had been running first and second until the track started to dry out. Then, encumbered by a 65kg weight penalty levied for being too fast last year, they dropped back to 9th and 12th. What we wanted was a wet race.

  Next day the sky, scrutinised over several bacon and egg sandwiches, looks promising. At 09.30,15 minutes before morning warm-up, light rain begins to fall. Biela wants his 'wet' ratios, which means a gearbox change. Panic? No, the job takes only about 12 minutes. An engine change takes an hour and a bit. The 24,000-mile service should take about 45 seconds, then. I am allowed under the car for the final part of the job, bolting the gearbox cover plate on. The socket slips on the shallow nut and I punch myself in the face.

  Our chaps are 2nd and 7th in warm-up, but we need more rain. Biela wants the other gearbox back and I'm invited to help, but by the time I've found a pair of heat-resistant gloves, the box is already swapped. I squirm to the rear diff to help fit the tubular prop shaft. There are no bolts – I push a spring-loaded pin home and, with a satisfied grunt, mate the shaft's female end with the diff's pinion. The bloke at t'other end slides the whole thing forward on to the gearbox and the locating pin snaps into place with a faintly unconvincing ping. Is that it? Presumably, as the exhaust is now being dragged over my chest. This simply slots into place – it's still hot – and is retained with a handful of bolts. Everything on the car has a torque setting and the blokes know them all by heart.

  As the race approaches, tension builds. I meet the drivers in the garage – can you imagine this happening in prima donna Fl? – and what an unlikely pairing they are. John Bintcliffe is small, stocky and bounces around like an excited schoolboy. Frank Biela is lanky and languid, lurking around with a permanent hunted expression on his face, probably because he's usually having a crafty fag where he shouldn't.

  When the pit lane opens, half an hour before the start, the excitement palpably intensifies. It's been declared a wet race, allowing us to switch from slicks to wets but not the other way. So we're out on the grid on slicks, hoping. The sky gleams like mercury, but the track is merely damp. Not damp enough. Almost at the instant the first drop hits my face the cry for wets goes up and the world goes mad.

  Air tools rattle like small-arms fire; the single big nut on each axle spins; wheels fly in all directions. My job is to roll the slicks across the grass and heave them over the pit wall to waiting arms. The knack is to get the wheel rolling, give it a bounce and then tip it over the wall like a volleyball. At my first attempt I was run over by my own wheel.

  I watch the start from a trackside box, the cubbyhole full of computers and telly screens where you expect to see Frank Williams looking po-faced. Beavis and Butthead streak away from 9th and 12th and arrive at the first corner first and second, but I don't really notice this as I'm busy scanning the now deserted grid for signs of the propshaft. And it's Biela ... from Bintcliffe ... with Al-ain Me-nu in the Renault some way off but looking dangerous. It stays like that, thanks to steady rain, until the last half of the last lap, when that lunatique Menu pips Bintcliffe. But first and third is Audi's best result for ages and there's much rejoicing over lunch of mixed grill in a bun.

  But the weather's improving, which means it's getting worse as far as we're concerned. For race two, a decision is made to change the spring rates on both cars, a job which, with the aid of an air-driven spring/damper compressor, takes a tad over 20 minutes. In the tumult of ratcheting, banging and hissing of air, I fail to make any contribution whatsoever. Just as I reach out to pass a tool or spring, it disappears in a flash before my eyes, whisked away by sleight of practised hand, with the result that I just wobble around the car permanently half a second behind the proceedings. But I do manage to change some wheels, mop water from the cockpit and wax both cars again.

  Then I put the fuel in. It comes in a huge plastic barrel with a sort of spring-loaded bung on the end. This is up-ended over a self-sealing filler in the A4's boot. Press down and the fuel just glugs in. Cock it up, though, and you'd fill your boots with petrol. A few blokes stand well within arms' length for this bit.

  For the race, I'm elected to the board – Biela's pit board, that is. One bloke fills in the time and lap details from a huge box of letters and numbers, and I hold it out as he streaks past. I remember this race as a series of small numbers. Each lap, the man on the stopwatches turns with ashen face and yells in my colleague's ear. He then reaches into the numbers box, sometimes for a higher digit, sometimes a lower one. In my clammy-handed excitement I almost drop the board over the wall. It has happened, apparently.

  But the track is just a bit too dry for the A4s. At the end it's Menu from Harvey, with Biela third and Bintcliffe fourth. But this is still excellent going, and the motorhome is full of rejoicing over the day's results. Yet even as Biela climbs the rostrum, the technicians are already beginning the huge, tedious task of dismantling the garage and packing all the equipment into the trucks.

  I don't envy these guys so much now. The racing is much more exciting from the inside, but beyond that there's hard graft and too many weekends away from home. For two days, though, I felt the satisfaction of one who has made a contribution, even if it was only a small blob of elbow grease, the sundry of the pit lane. If you watched the races on the telly, you may just have noticed a bloke in the pit lane wearing a regulation Audi paddock fleece but completely the wrong trousers, looking knackered yet apparently doing sod all. That was me, that was. />
  PART 4 – THE THRILL OF THE OPEN ROAD

  (AT LEAST UNTIL THE PHOTOGRAPHER WANTS TO STOP AND TAKE A PICTURE)

  A CHEAP HOLIDAY IN SOMEONE ELSE'S CAMPER-VAN MISERY

  It is said that an Englishman's home is his castle. Rubbish. Kings and lords live in castles, and I'm pretty sure they're never asked to put some shelves up or do a spot of Hoovering.

  It's why so many chaps have sheds. A shed offers the solitude that poets, philosophers and other deep thinkers have always craved; an oasis of personal squalor that some ancient and immutable social law says should not be invaded by anyone else.

  Trouble is, a shed first requires a garden, and that, eventually, will need weeding. A more elegant solution is what I would call a camper van but what is more correctly known these days as a motor caravan. A camper van offers similar sanctuary but with a constantly changing vista; a rolling shed giving access to the greater garden that is England's countryside. That same sense of fetid insularity can be enjoyed bang in the middle of a national park, with the added advantage that no one is going to ask you to mow it.

  This was the plan – to travel, snail-like, with a microcosm of home at my back and to stay, alone, in those places where I'd often wished I could if only there was a hotel, but which would actually be spoiled by the presence of one. If not the middle of nowhere, then at least well into its interior. Exmoor, then – a part of the world pretty much as Adam would have known it.

  On my first morning in the van, I had to acknowledge that I had only half succeeded. From one steamed-up window I beheld an expanse of soft green pasture complete with low-lying dawn mist and whinnying pony. From the other, an uninterrupted view of Exford Post Office.