Apparently back from riding his bike in Vietnam, Clarkson published an article in the The Times this Sunday about a new version of the Audi R8. That's the Audi R8 V10 Performance. Whilst the article made a change from his recent eco-ramblings (heaven knows what happened to him), this was an archetypal Clarkson spiel apparently driven by an element of nostalgia for near obsolete power plants. From the comments section it is apparent that many people fancy Clarkson as a politician. Personally I’m rather glad he isn’t, because if he was Prime Minister and leader of the Conservatives – it would create the one scenario where the other JC would actually win an election. And we don’t want that.
What really caught my eye though was some comments from people clearly understanding the not-so-humble internal combustion now finds itself on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Apparently this state of affairs creates a sort of nostalgia or resistance to change that causes evidently intelligent people to make unintelligent comments. (This is different from most comments online which are clearly made by robots – possibly human ones). One example I just felt compelled to comment on. (I rarely do, as the act of commenting on a website always reminds me of the cartoon where some hapless fellow is hacking at his keyboard late into the night as his wife is calling him, he responds “I can’t come, someone is wrong on the internet”)! Anyway, I quote “I’ve no doubt a Tesla is a nice thing but I’ve no want for one currently. Not even if it’s quicker over the Kessel run than the Millennium Falcon.” Ironically the Model X P100D is significantly faster to 60 than the fastest road going Audi the article reports on. Let’s just get that straight shall we, a heavy, 7 seat SUV is faster than Clarkson’s pinnacle of the internal combustion era, a hard-core V10 road-going 2 seater supercar!
My reply – “I happen to know that you “have no want for a Tesla” not because electric cars are less fun or exciting or are composed of a lesser factor of engineering. No. It’s because you’ve not tried one for a week. If you had, you’d be a convert. Simple as that really.
I mean clearly these people are using noise as the only metric of desirability for a car (where louder is better). Which is a bit like opting to live in a country based on it's propensity to experience earthquakes. Talk about getting your priorities right...
Now I really must switch off the computer before someone else is wrong on the internet.