June 08, 2007
Now that's bloody good writing!
The U.K.'s Times offers choice snippets from the acidic pen of automotive writer Jeremy Clarkson, and they're so damn good I defy you to resist reading the rest of the reviews.
Here's a few of my favorites.
"I’d love to meet the man who styled the exterior, to find out if he’d done it as some sort of a joke. But mostly I’d like to meet the man who simply didn’t bother at all with the interior. Because looking at that dashboard gives you some idea of what it might be like to be dead."
"This is without doubt the worst car, not just in its category but in the world. It has a top speed of 88mph but takes so long to reach it that no one has ever lived long enough to verify the claim, the inside is tackier than Anthea Turner’s wedding and you don’t want to think what would happen if it bumped into a lamppost.
"Also its name sounds like a disease."
"You may have seen The Fly II, in which a scientist attempts to teleport a dog. In one of the most gruesome scenes I've seen in a film it arrives at its destination completely inside out. Well the Rio is uglier than that. Inside, things get worse.
"Small wonder Kia's importer in Britain is sponsoring the Pedestrian Association's Walking Bus scheme. The idea is that parents take it in turns to walk a group, or "bus", of children to their school in a morning. After three days of being transported in the Rio, my kids thought it was a brilliant idea to walk instead. Even though their school is 18 miles away and it was blowing a gale directly from the Canadian tundra."
There are a total of twelve write-ups of truly terrible cars, each one lovingly described in pungent prose far better than the rides deserve.
Good stuff.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 8, 2007 12:31 AM
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Comments
It is painfully obvious he doesn't care much for the U.S. or GWB. At least he is consistent.
Posted by: Trickish Knave at June 8, 2007 11:35 AM
Notwithstanding his general anti-U.S. stance (fairly typical for many Brits, unfortunately), I still enjoy his writing, choosing to ignore the political stuff.
It's the same way I manage to enjoy Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock, in which the politically-reprehensible actor is simply hilarious.
Posted by: Mike Lief at June 8, 2007 11:53 AM