Cleanest in the world

The question I most hate being asked is “what car should I buy?” Because people who scarcely know me ask it all the time. I have no idea how much money they have to spend, nor do I know whether they want it for track days on the Nordschleife, towing a horsebox through mud, or ferrying the kids to school. I usually resort to saying, “I think it simply has to be either a smart fortwo or a Bugatti Veyron.” Silly questions require silly answers.

What I can do, however, is pick the cars I’ve particularly enjoyed driving this year, ranging from supercars to city shoppers: so here are my own, personal, top three cars driven this year, all chosen for very different reasons.

In third place, for me, is the Nissan 370Z Roadster, because the idea of spending just £30,000 and getting an open-topped semi-supercar that handles like a dream and does 0-62 in 5.8 seconds is laughable. In a good way.

Second place goes to a car I wasn’t expecting to like. It’s just not “my” sort of car at all, but I was utterly blown away by the amazing combination of performance, luxury and price in the Mercedes C-Class Estate. Make sure to get the heated seats, and winter weather will never bother you again.

But in first place by a country mile is a car I believe to be one of the most important new vehicles for a decade. Not only is the Fiat 500 TwinAir powered by the world’s cleanest mass-produced petrol engine, but it is truly, genuinely, honestly fun to drive. I was expecting to forgive the TwinAir quite a lot. I expected the two-cylinder engine to be buzzy, noisy and slow. But it was none of these. It was superb.

So there you go. My three personal bests of 2010. But then again, none of them is much good as a seven-seater people carrier…

I was at the Silverstone Classic the other week, watching (among others) Sir Stirling Moss, in his first race since breaking both ankles in a fall down his lift shaft earlier this year. Not many 80-year-olds would have survived the fall at all… let alone be back racing a few months later.

Thing is, everyone was going to say he drove brilliantly, whether he did or not. But believe me – he DID drive brilliantly. Fast and precise at the wheel of his little red OSCA, he and his co-driver climbed steadily up the field until Sir Stirl was leading the class. Then, with just 10 minutes of the hour-long race to go, his gearbox stuck in fourth and he pulled into the pits (gifting the class victory to rock star Chris Rea). “We were flying and I really enjoyed it,” said the indefatigable Moss afterwards.

We need more blokes with this sort of spirit.

I used to work with a race team that was sponsored by a top-shelf men’s mag. One of the (many) things I learned is that the most popular models are not the most beautiful, nor the ones with the biggest… statistics. It’s the ‘girl next door’ image that sells mags – because they seem almost within reach. Ultra-glamorous models are clearly just fantasy.

Which brings me to the Ford Focus RS500. Never mind its 350HP, which – despite being front-wheel drive – sees it bullet from 0-62mph in 5.9 seconds, it’s the stealth-bomber, matt-black body that sets this outrageous little machine apart. We borrowed one to drive back from the Le Mans Classic last week. Thing is, I have never, ever known so much attention from onlookers – not in a Ferrari, not in a Porsche, not in anything. At the péage on the French autoroute, the blokes were coming out of their booths to take a look.

At £35k, the RS500 isn’t cheap, but it’s still an almost-attainable ‘car next door’, rather than a billionaire’s Ferrari. Except, of course, it isn’t attainable because they’re all sold out. Rumour tells us that the 500 cars built were sold out in five hours…

Does anyone have any idea of the purpose of the fluffy “dashboard mat” on the Nissan Cube? We looked underneath it, thinking there might be a toilet there, but there isn’t. A friend suggested it might be to keep your bum warm when you’re mooning, but that seems unlikely. Or is it, more prosaically, to keep coins from sliding about if you chuck them on the dashboard? Trouble is, if you corner hard, the coins tend to shoot off. Or are we missing the point by looking for a practical purpose? Is it just some sort of art installation?

RM Auctions has found a new owner for Ferrari 250 GTO chassis no. 4675 GT. While RM is not saying who, or how much they paid, rumour has it that Chris Evans bought it for… 18m dollars. That sounds a lot till you consider that someone recently paid 106m dollars for a little-known Picasso; and all you can do with THAT is stick it on your wall.