“It’s not so much a car as an extension of your body. If it stumbles, you feel hurt. But if everything is going well, there is no greater feeling in the world.”

Some pretty strange things happen in autumn. For one, all the leaves change colour into various hues of orange and brown, and then they drop off the tree altogether. Animals tend to start settling down for winter hibernation, and the world in general takes on deathly chill in the run up to winter. Autumn is definitely a time when everything either looks dead, dying, or very recently deceased. The earth seems to take one last gulp of air, and then settle down until the New Year. Some animals never make it through to the following spring. Those that may have been around the longest, and may seem to be one of the strongest contenders, are just as likely to kick it during the colder months as any other animal. This rather neatly sums up how I feel about Porsche.

“I for one would not dream of getting on a plane if the pilot wasn’t there. He could be out cold drunk and be a recovering heroin addict, but as long as he’s slumped at the wheel of the plane, I’m happy.”

I read this week that Audi plans to do a spot of racing. Nothing unfamiliar there you might think. But get this; they’re planning to do a spot of racing, in a car with no driver. Apparently they’re using their new Quatto TTS in a hillclimb race to unveil their newest innovation of “Vorsprung durch Technik” which is German for “Advancement Through Technology.” But here’s the thing. There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the future of the motor industry, and how we’re going to cope with getting newer and better fuels for our cars. But nobody’s really talking about the technology that will help us drive better in the future. So my question tonight is this: A driverless car, would it ever work?

“People rarely make the effort to offer congratulations and praise if something is done right. If you make a great show, ten people will say you did well. But if you make one slip up, ten million people will try to burn your house down.”

We see some proper rubbish on television these days. Not a single Saturday night goes past without millions of Brits gawking into the endless annoying mannerisms of Simon Cowell. And now, with the newest round of “I’m a Z list Celebrity, and I’m only doing this because they couldn’t get anyone better,” starting tonight, it seems the days of decent programming are drawing to an end. Or are they? For it seems as if a light has been turned on at the end of the TV tunnel. A single flickering candle of honest television. A beacon for petrol and diesel heads alike. Yes ladies and gents, the wait is over. Top Gear is back!

“Are you the sort of person who covers himself in sunflower oil to increase his cars aerodynamic ability?”

I hate the idea that certain clothes must be worn for certain pastimes. Take Tennis as an example. Who decided that the perfect colour for a sport which mainly involves falling over would be white? What government body decided that what the women of the sport needed most was a mini-skirt? And unfortunately this is the same with driving. A manufacturer called Me-Mo has announced this week that they’ll be bringing out an exclusive range of driving shoes. Really? So these shoes are meant exclusively for driving? So what, do they disintegrate if you wear them on the train? Do they burst into flame if you take them for a gentle jog?

“Since he retired from professional racing, there has been no other driver to pick up his mantle.”

Here’s the second article I entered for this years Sir William Lyons Award. The brief was to construct an overview of a famous figure to do with motor racing. Anticipating the queue of people lining up to write about Lewis Hamilton, I chose to write about someone truly special. I chose my namesake. I chose Stirling Moss. Enjoy!

“Making a supercar go green is like forcing the SAS to wear high visibility jackets. A good idea, but not exactly sporting is it?”

A few months ago I put pen to paper and entered something called the Sir William Lyons Award. Each year it recognises the next up and coming motoring journalist, and hell, I thought, how hard can it be? Needless to say that this year, I didn’t win. I didn’t even come close to winning. But I tried nonetheless, and I’ll keep on trying until I do win. The secretary of the Guild of Motoring Writers noted that it had taken this years winner three attempts at the competition to finally win the award, and I offer my sincere congratulations to whomever it is. So I don’t view this as a failure to win, I view it as stike one of three. And besides, at least it’s given me some good blog material! So here you are then, the first of my two nearly-award-winning articles. The other one will be appearing here tommorrow, so check back soon!

“He’ll use the miracle of Man-Maths to point out that if you simply sell your current car, along with your house, your wife, your children and most of your ribs, that actually it works out rather cheap”

Scientists have long observed that if ever we do meet little green men, they will probably speak to us not in our native tongue, but in numbers. This is because, they say, maths is the only true universal language, and is one that would probably be employed by people from other planets. For years they’ve claimed that only mathematicians will be able to communicate, being the only ones to understand the numerical gymnastics required. Well, as it turns out, they may have been dead wrong. Because the smartest mathematicians in the world are in fact car salesmen.

“I will then go on to point out that whilst bare metal might indeed be a strong material, it should in no way form the basis for a car interior”

As men, we like to live under the illusion that we are smart. We like to think of ourselves as a secret Archimedes or Einstein. Of course, this is usually not the case, but still, it’s nice to pretend. This is why we approach things like DIY with such vigour. We envision erecting the shelf equivalent of the Sistine chapel, or doing a better job of carpeting the stairs than Da Vinci managed of the Mona Lisa. Usually its only when the shelves fall down, and the stairs are on fire that we realise we’re not quite as smart as we first thought. But that knowledge of failure then awakens our other primeval instinct. That other great trait of blokes everywhere. The ability to defend our failure in the face of all adversity. We’ll claim that the stairs are supposed to be on fire, and that the shelves not staying up on the wall is all to do with the layout of the house, and nothing to do with our shoddy handiwork. We defend our failures to the death. And nowhere is this trait more evident, than in our cars.

“The muscle car has become a social stigma. In the same way that you don’t shout about having syphilis, you tend to keep quiet if you own a Mustang.”

Every self-respecting bloke in the world harbours, secretly, a set of plans as to what he believes makes the perfect car. A carefully selected set of criteria, that combined with the unbound limits of human imagination, makes the perfect transport. This image of four-wheeled perfection is usually influenced by his job. So if he’s a chartered accountant for example, his car is going to be quite dull, but probably very practical and economical. If he’s an astronaut though, you can bet there’ll be one or two spoilers on it, and a rather large engine up the front. Possibly with some machine-guns stuck onto the side for good measure. This being planet earth however, the creations we mould in our heads rarely come to pass in reality, and so we find the next best thing on sale, and nine times out of ten, we buy it. Men and women all over the world are born and grow up picturing what they believe is the ultimate car. They hang pictures of it all over their bedroom walls. They dream about it at night. And then, when they reach forty and have a mid-life crisis, they buy it. Now you may think I’m rambling a bit, but my point here is that we each have a favourite car. And, for whatever reason, we covet to own one. It’s like a drug, it appeals to us on every level. Imagine my surprise then, when the car I’ve lusted over for the past two decades, starts to look, well, a bit crap really.

“A three page press release often boils down to a few simple sentences. We’ve made a car. It’s quite good really. It looks pretty. Fancy a try?”

As anyone who works in Public Relations will tell you, there’s a lot of BS that goes into making a car successful. You have to wave goodbye to the common sense of the English Language, and engage yourself in such a way that it takes you 45 minutes to explain something that could have been described in three words.