Dan Neil vs. Global Dan Neil
Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times reviews a new Audi.
No fewer than four Audi employees in shiny suits escorted the 2008 Audi R8 to the L.A. Times' garage a few weeks ago, a veritable task force of handlers to introduce me to the company's new six-figure, mid-engine supercar. Once they arrived, there wasn't much for them to do but stand around and Armor-All their lapels. Despite the R8's evident exoticism — the car is low, wide and mirthless, its gimlet eyes fixing you with white-hot LEDs like it was brooding on ways to wreck your marriage — the car required no special instructions. There were no gear-shifting paddles attached to the flat-bottomed steering wheel (though they are an option), no hydraulics to raise the front end as there are in the nose-grinding Lamborghini Murcielago, no wing-setting launch sequence as in the Bugatti Veyron. Just turn the key, drop the clutch and go.
Jeremy Clarkson of the London Times surfaces via a link in TMN's news feed to the best of his xenophobia-free and yet country-broadsiding auto criticism, making Clarkson, for me, the Global Dan Neil.
In America everyone wants to be a part of the great outdoors. They like the idea of cutting down trees and shooting critters in the spine. Even the most sockless preppy from Georgetown DC is able and willing to slip out of his loafers at a moment's notice and into a hairy shirt for a weekend under canvas in the woods.
What's more, in America everyone wants to be a factory worker. They seem to find manual labour and engineer boots rather noble. Bruce Springsteen has more money than God but unlike Britain's rock gods, who wear tweed and Armani, he dresses like he's spent all day up a telegraph pole. Only in America could there have been a song called Wichita Lineman. An ode to a man who spends all day long driving around a useless state, in a pick-up truck, looking for broken telephone wires.
That's from a review of a Volkswagon Transporter (full review archive here). Clarkson first mentions the van in the review's 14th paragraph.
He proceeds to explain how his British people have no respect for the working man, how they feel no compulsion to be like him and how this van is the British equivalent of the pick-up truck. So while Americans love pick-up trucks, the British hate vans.
Clarkson then performs what he considers to be an appropriate test drive. "Well it has a jolly big boot," he explains. "I lowered my trousers until my bum cheeks were showing, went to buy some chicken feed and couldn't believe how much space was left over."
