A
colleague told me
recently that he’d
decided to buy a
cottage in a Wiltshire
village because the
neighbours had two
Volvos on the drive.
So he figured they’d
be nice people.
It’s an interesting
point. People spend a
great deal of time and care and
attention on making their house
look pretty and then they park
a Nissan Juke in front of it. Or a
slammed Honda Civic. I know
one chap who has a beautiful
house. Or it would be except for
the fact that most of it’s usually
hidden behind a godawful
Lincoln Navigator.
If I were selling my house
and a photograph of it were to
appear in one of the property
porn mags, I’d make sure the car
in the drive was somethingrestrained and tasteful but at
the same time reasonably
expensive to suggest affluence.
A dark grey Range Rover
perhaps. Or a 5-series BMW in
navy blue. Or two Volvos.
In recent years this has been
a problem for petrolheads who
like driving quickly, because
ordinary people tend to find
flashy, growly, low and lime-
green cars disgusting, and are
mistrustful of the idiots who
buy them. I’d love to have a
Lamborghini but I wouldn’t
want to live next door to
someone who has one. I’d live
in constant fear that he’d pop
over to show me his tattoos.
So I was drawn recently to
some YouTube footage of a new
idea for home car storage. It’s
like a shipping container with
no sides and you drive in,
press a button, and the whole
thing slides underground,leaving no trace on the surface.
I think the idea is that if you live
in a city you can have secure
off-street parking as well as a
small garden, which is located
on the roof of your “garage”. But
it would be perfect for people,
like me, who want to hide their
guilty secret. You have mates
round for a barbecue and they
won’t realise, as they’re having
a cold beer among your
geraniums, that they’re right
on top of your thousand-
horsepower destroyer of worlds.
All of this came to me after a
man from Porsche dropped off
the new GT4 RS, which I figured
would be a red rag to all of the
plant-based Biden enthusiasts
who live around this neck of the
woods these days. It’s a car you
might want, but it’s not a car
you’d want to have on your drive.
I was wrong. Everyone who
came to my door while it wasDRIVING●Jeremy Clarkson
Meet the noisy neighbour
that everyone seems to love
REVIEW:
PORSCHE 718
CAYMAN GT4 RS
66 • The Sunday Times Magazine