Okay tubby, you could get a nation out of a jam Renault Clio

Once again the mysterious Highways Agency has claimed that the slower you drive the faster you will reach your destination. It sounds preposterous, but if you're a subscriber to the teachings of Lenin and Marx it's true.

If everyone trundles to work at the People's Tractor Factory No 37 in their Ladas at a state controlled 40 mph, the motorway will run smoothly and efficiently. Especially if the government radio is playing calming songs and the People's Roadwork Johnnies have not closed a selection of lanes so they can sit in a hut all day drinking vodka and playing cards.

Unfortunately socialism like this doesn't work because in reality roadwork people do tend to close lanes and then retire to their huts for a game of whist. And what's more, you will always have people, usually in BMWs, who think their journey will be completed a little more quickly if they duck and weave. And why not? It's by ducking and weaving in life that they ended up with such expensive cars.

Similarly there are those, usually in N-registered Peugeots, who drive as though they've been plugged into the mains. They cannot maintain a constant speed, which means they creep up to the car in front and then brake. And then repeat the process. Endlessly. These people, like those in the Beemers, cause the big metal traffic snake to judder and stall. These are the ones who bring the socialist ideology crashing to the ground.

Of course, to try to prevent people in Peugeots and BMWs messing up the Leninist theory of how traffic should flow in an ideal world, the sinister Highways Agency has developed a whole new state control system to quash individualism on the motorway.

Nowadays men in bunkers armed with sensors and predictive programming are able to change the speed limit at will and automatically activate overhead cameras to catch and prosecute those who flout the law. Sadly, this doesn't work either. I drove round the M25 recently and in a twenty-mile section the speed limit changed eleven times. For no palpable reason.

To make matters worse newly installed gantries designed to flash socialist messages from Downing Street to the masses keep us up to speed with problems ahead. Problems that usually don't exist. 'Warning. The Conservatives are not to be trusted.' 'Think before you drink.' 'A worker is more productive if he takes a break.' And of course, 'Congestion after next junction.'

There never is. What's happened is that a sensor somewhere has detected a man in an N-registered Peugeot braking and decided quite wrongly that there must be a reason for this. Down goes the speed limit and up go more messages about how the firemen are on strike and that it might be a good idea to drive carefully until the KGB's got them back to the station again.

This was one of my favourite gantry messages. Because I sort of assumed that when they did go back to work we'd get a new message saying that it was okay to drive recklessly.

You might assume that the sheer complication of it all is specifically designed to confuse the motorist into going past a speed camera too quickly and therefore having to pay a £60 fine to the state. But you'd be wrong. Recent figures show that Britain's 6,000 Gatso cameras earned £110 million last year but made a profit of just £12 million. That's rather less than the government gets in tax from someone like Sir Anthony Bamford.

The facts are these. There is no proof that speed cameras have saved a single life and plenty of evidence to suggest they haven't. They have simply raised a fortune that is then wasted on massive state inefficiency. The sort of inefficiency that we see every day on the motorway. Ludicrously low speed limits, especially when the People's Navvies are out and about digging holes, idiotic safety messages and warnings of hazards ahead that could have come from the hand of a fiction writer like Alistair MacLean.

Or Piers Morgan.

What's to be done? Well, in recent weeks the great white Tory hope, David Cameron, has made some unusual appointments. There's Zac Goldsmith, who's been taken on to help shape the party's green credentials, and - more bizarrely - Bob Geldof, who's been asked to help out with Third World debt. So why has he not yet approached me to sort out the transport mess? Because it's simple. You replace the overhead gantries with police marksmen who are allowed to shoot anyone who changes lane for no reason or who brakes when there's no need.

I'd also like to have special powers to deal with the man who allowed the Oxford ring road to be cordoned off recently so that someone could dig a hole in the grass verge . . . and then go home, for ever. I'd like to think these special powers could involve battery terminals and some pliers.

Then there's the PR issue. We need to get the message across that 3,200 deaths a year is tragic but not excessive. With 30 million vehicles on the roads it's nothing short of a bloody miracle. And then we should set to work on the big problem. You don't cure congestion by slowing traffic down. You cure congestion by speeding it up.

And that brings me on to the new Renault Clio. Apart from the fast versions, I never used to like the old model much. Oh, it had transparent windows and some wheels, but it felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment. And it looked fat, somehow, which meant it was a bit like driving around in Rory McGrath.

The new version is much more handsome on the outside and feels a lot more substantial on the inside. There's so much soft touch leather-look plastic you could almost be fooled into thinking you were in a German car.

Unfortunately, by being loaded up with lots of luxury trimmings the Clio has become a real fatso. It doesn't feel like Rory McGrath any more. But it weighs the same. A whopping 130 kg more than the old one.

And that's a problem, because Renault couldn't very well launch this car onto the market saying: 'Hey, everyone. It's heavier than the last version and that means it uses more fuel.' So to make sure it uses less they've had to cut the power. And then, to make sure it didn't actually go like a nunnery, they seem to have shortened the gear ratios.

The price, then, of having a car that feels like German granite is that on the motorway it sounds like a German prison guard. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Off the motorway it feels French again. There's a looseness to the controls that you just won't find in, say, a VW Polo or even a Ford Fiesta. The gearbox feels more baggy than a sack of bubble wrap and the steering's all wobbly. It's weird, gazing out over a Teutonic view and then finding the undersides are not hard at all. It's like one of those liqueur chocolates. You gird your jaw to tackle the outer shell and then find the soft centre has dribbled all down your shirt.

Some semblance of order is restored if you're a teenager, because while the Clio may appear to be a cheap, practical, and jolly safe little thing - the sort of car your parents might buy for you to go to university with - it's actually very good fun to drive.

Once you put your foot down the whole package seems to come to life: I liked driving it fast about as much as I didn't like driving it slowly.

This makes it the perfect car for Britain's transport problems. Because if you dawdle along, braking every now and again, you'll find it a rather ill-conceived mishmash. But if you drive to work like you really want to get there, you'll have fun and perform a social service all at the same time.

Sunday 15 January 2006

http://www.penguin.com.au/lookinside/spotlight.cfm?SBN=9780718155735&Page=Extract