Americana Part–One

I was watching Top Gear the other night, and you may remember the episode. It’s the one where Jeremy Clarkson goes out in a mediocre family car that looks like a slug and goes just as fast as one too. He takes it to Royal Tunbridge Wells where he thinks it will fit in perfectly with the kind of people who live there.

The Dialogue is as Predictable as Ever

Top Gear being predictable as ever, Clarkson has plenty of opportunity for his usual wise cracks. He is then seen driving some behemoth of a sports car over a twisty part of this green and pleasant land with, More Than a Feeling, by Boston playing as the sound track. The Top Gear cameraman seemed to find a new effect with a lens to make the sky look more broody, before cutting to the car going sideways on a track somewhere with rear tyres smoking.

Of course, we are never quite sure if Jeremy is really the one driving it at this point. You do get a close up of his toothy grimace, however, and makes you think of Wallace eating a chunk of tangy Wensleydale. Yep, you know that look.

Later in the studio an argument ensues as to the coolness of the car, which is a model that none of us will be able to afford anyway, and so the whole subject matter really is irrelevant.

Do American’s Have Their own Version of Top Gear?

Before I drift too far from the point, I was thinking, as I watched the show, what do Americans have for car shows on the box? If they have something akin to Top Gear then what sort of cars does it feature. I can see it now, the great excitement of how many adults, including dogs and kids, can be fitted into one SUV, or which is the most imposing pick–up vehicle to own?

It must have been something I had been drinking to have come up with these thoughts I guess, or just the way my mind seems to wander off at a tangent these days.

As I continue to watch the antics of Clarkson, May and Hammond, I went off again into my little world and thought that if Jeremy was standing in profile, and if he were to be compared to the shape of the North American continent, that would put his rear end roughly in the right position to make it L.A. This is rather fitting, because if the good Lord were to give that continent an enema, then nowhere deserves it better.

Life Doesn’t Seem to Throw up Those Surprises Quite so Often Now

What I am eventually getting to is that after you have spent a few decades on this planet it seems you know exactly what to expect. During childhood, Christmas was a time for wide–eyed wonderment, but not these days.

Now you know you will have to visit, or be visited by relatives, and that despite everyone loathing Uncle Frank with that ridiculous wig, and Aunt Beryl with her vermillion lip–stick under her moustache, you know someone will have done the right thing by inviting them along.

Trying Not to Make it Look as if You are Interested
in Women’s Underware

It’s like when your wife says she just needs a couple of things from the shops, and of course yet again you believe her. How the lingerie section will always be right by the fitting rooms, so despite the fact that you are loitering outside waiting for your good lady to appear, you actually feel you are being looked upon as a pervert on day release. What happens here is the more you try to act normal, and to look innocent, the more strange your presence there will seem.

Other things you get to know with life experience is that anyone driving a car whilst wearing a trilby is a hazard. You know you will get nasal hair, someone always gets drunk at weddings and there’s always that girl crying at parties, but no one seesm to know who she is.

You know that one day you will find grey is again fashionable, and that no matter how much time you allow to complete a task, there will always be something that makes you exceed it. Yes, some things in this life are a definite – like death and taxes. You just know they are going to happen.

If You are Nodding Sagely in Agreement as you Read,
Then Welcome to my World.

By applying the same theory, you just know that America is not the place to go looking for anything decent on four wheels.

True, it’s a great place for a holiday, but cars? Not these days. Yep, back in the halcyon of Steve McQueen they made cars, iconic cars with names that young boys would dream about, and adorn their bedroom walls with posters depicting their favourite marque. These would be the Mustang, Corvette, anything with Shelby in the name, GT40 and big block Chevy’s. Heady days they were, but not now.

I am Charged with Writing about Americans and Their Cars

When Julian at Ride Drive Towers heard I was going to be driving around The States for four weeks, he asked me to get a story on all things Americana and the American love of the internal combustion engine. Yes, America and cars, just knowing what I knew, this wasn’t going to be good, as real cars and America don’t go together in the same sentence anymore.

As if you would want proof of this I did some research, looking up to see what the great US of A had as their top ten best selling models for the year 2006.

Total sales of the above amounted to 3.9–million units, but there is not one sports car among them. Absolutely nothing to quicken the pulse, and with gas (petrol) prices being the equivalent of about £1.50 per gallon, that’s roughly 33–pence a litre, what on earth is going on?

I actually have an acquaintance who lives in Vegas. He is a man of some means and someone who owns six sports cars, but when I say they are all Toyota MR2’s, you start to get my drift?

So, in automotive terms, what sort of cars do young boys dream of and what sort of vehicle posters do they hang on their bedroom walls in America? The Dodge Ram pick–up perhaps? It’s a great utility vehicle after all – Zzzzz.

With an Uneventful Landing on American Soil, we’ed Arrived

Well, we made it, and the flight was as uneventful as you might expect these days. Landing in Vegas, and after going through all the normal formalities with immigration and alike, we took the bus to the Alamo hire centre adjacent to the airport, picked up hire car, a Jeep Cherokee, and set off to Caesars Palace, this being the hotel we had booked.

It was dark when we arrived, and as the airport is more or less at the bottom of the Vegas Strip, we were soon in the centre of a whole lot of hullabaloo.

It was heaving with traffic and everything lit up like a forest of Christmas trees arranged on Blackpool seafront in late September – except it wasn’t cold here. 5–minutes later and we are at the hotel, and what a place! The hotel was the size of what would be a small town back home, but this was Caesars Palace, and our first time stopping here.

“I’m Sorry Sir,
I Shall have to Upgrade your Room.”

Whilst it is true that my reason for being in this vast continent was that of a relaxing holiday with my wife, I cannot forget the words of Jules back at the Ride Drive office. He had asked me to get some motoring stories, and I was warned not to forget to take some photographs. Better do as I am told, I thought, otherwise I’ll only get moaned at.

So, what is there to look at driving about on the big roads of the United States of America? From what I saw at my first point of arrival, things did not look that inspiring.

I shall, in my next installment, report upon my findings. You never know, we may all be surprised at what I find.

First Published October 2006

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Americana Part–One