Jeremy Clarkson - Really?

Motorworld

Jeremy Clarksons Hot 100

Jeremy Clarksons Planet Dagenham

Born to Be Riled

Clarkson on Cars

The World According to Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul

And Another Thing

Dont Stop Me Now

For Crying Out Loud!

Driven to Distraction

How Hard Can It Be?

Round the Bend

Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

As I Was Saying

If Youd Just Let Me Finish!

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First published 2019

Copyright Jeremy Clarkson, 2019

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Illustration by Lyndon Hayes

ISBN: 978-1-405-93908-9

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

The contents of this book first appeared in Jeremy Clarksons Sunday Times column. Read more about the world according to Clarkson every week in the Sunday Times.

When a new Mercedes comes along, you know before youve even opened the door what it will be like. All Mercs feel broadly similar until the company changes direction, which happens about once every 4,000 years, and then, ever so slowly, they all start to feel slightly different.

Its the same story with BMW. Its cars were all fast and light for a long time, and then they all became heavy and a bit terrible, and now theyre all as good as cars can be (except the X3, obviously).

With Lexus, you never know what youre going to get. Its not swings and roundabouts; its rollercoasters and big buckets full of steaming excrement. Some Lexuses are so brilliant that you have to bite the back of your hand to stop yourself crying out. Others are so bad that you consider driving at full speed into a tree to end the misery. And then you have those that are beautifully made but a bit forgettable. I cant recall their names at the moment.

Only recently, I tried the new RC F, which is a four-seat, two-door sports coup priced and powered to compete with the BMW M4. And despite what my colleague said last week, it misses the target by about 217 miles, partly because it weighs more than the Atlantic Ocean and partly because you drive around everywhere in a wail of dreary understeer.

So what of the new NX? Hmm. There are lots of letters that work well in a cars name. T, for example, or S or R Rs very popular right now. R says a lot about a man. It says nearly as much as Z. But N? No. N doesnt work. Its like U.

To make matters worse, its one of those crossover SUV thingies, which are popular because they are perceived to be more robust and safer than ordinary hatchbacks. Theyre not. But they are more expensive, more wasteful and needlessly enormous.

Whats more, if you peel away the premium-brand badging, the NX is essentially a Toyota RAV4. So you can think of it as a sweatshop jumper with a Ralph Lauren horse on the front.

Oh, and heres the clincher. Its a hybrid. It says so on the side, so that cyclists will not be tempted to bang on your roof as they pedal by. Yes, youre driving a large car, but its kind to the environment so thats OK. No, it isnt. Its unkind and daft. A hybrid may produce fewer carbon dioxides from its tailpipe than a normal car, but the cost to the planet of making the damn things with all those motors and batteries is immense. Anyone who buys a hybrid for ecological reasons is telling the world that they are an idiot.

So, a crossover hybrid with an N in its name and low-rent underpinnings from a company thats capable of turning out a howler from time to time. This is not looking good. But heres the thing: it does. At first you think its all too complicated and fussy, but its actually very well proportioned and full of genuinely lovely touches. Its one of those cars that compel you to turn round for another look after youve locked them up for the night.

And its even better on the inside. The driving position is good, the dials look as if they were designed by the International Watch Company, the quality of the materials is way better than you have a right to expect for this price and there are many toys to play with. And just when you think youve played with them all, you find another bank of switches and off you go again. I especially liked the touchpad that steers the arrow around the satnav screen.

And I amused myself for hours with the head-up display system, moving it up the windscreen to its highest point and then wondering what shape a driver would have to be to want it there. Another game was pushing buttons and guessing what youd done. Half the time, nothing seemed to happen.

This is because, behind the scenes, the Lexus is phenomenally complicated. Theres a normal 4-cylinder 2.5-litre petrol engine that produces 153bhp, but then there are other motors too, doing all sorts of trickery. Theres even one in the back to power the rear wheels when you are in a field.

And they are all linked together by sorcery. It feels, when you put your foot down, as if its fitted with one of those awful cones-and-belt continuously variable gearboxes technology that fills me with such rage that my hair starts to move about and my teeth begin to itch. But further investigation reveals that, although the transmission system is called eCVT, its different from traditional versions: all the units send their power into what in essence is a differential, and this sends the motive force to the wheels.

So you start the engine and nothing happens. You set off in electric silence, and then when you want to go faster you push the accelerator and the petrol engine zooms up to a certain point in the rev band and stays there until you decide youve had enough. I dont like it at all and I cannot believe its the most economical solution. But the NX 300h is not aimed at me. Its aimed at, um, people who dont really care what the rev counters doing.

This is not a fast car. Its not even on nodding terms with the concept of speed. Time and again, I found myself driving along with a huge queue of cars in my wake, wondering why everyone was being so aggressive and sporty all of a sudden. But they werent. It was me. Ive never driven so slowly in all my life. I actually had to speed up for the cameras.

Which is fine because in this day and age lots of people just want to get home at night. And its good at that. Very good. It is extremely comfortable and remarkably quiet. Theres even an EV mode button that puts it in a pure electric motor setting, which would make it quieter still, but every time I pushed it I was told the system was temporarily unavailable. I therefore went back to playing with the head-up display.