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BMW M5

Once, I drove on a highway near Atlanta, in Georgia, that runs through a wood for about 16,000 miles. It is very boring. But after a quick trip to Wales last week I’ve decided that the M4 is even worse. Some say that the most boring motorway in the world is the M1, but actually it’s not dull at all. It has a history and even a hint of romance. People have written songs about it and you pass many exciting places such as Gulliver’s Kingdom and the Billing Aquadrome. You’re tempted at every junction to get off and have a snout around. Except, perhaps, junction 22. Coalville’s not that appealing. Plus the M1 makes your blood boil, especially at the moment, because almost all of it is coned off and subjected to a rigorously enforced 50mph speed limit. Driving on this section is like reading The Guardian. It gets the adrenaline going. It makes your teeth itch with impotent rage. The M4, on the other hand, is like a book with nothing written on any of the pages. You pass Bracknell and Rea

Rolls-Royce Phantom II

ou can’t really relax when it’s your daughter’s 18th birthday party and your house is rammed to bursting point with a cocktail of rampaging testosterone and vodka. Certainly you can’t just go to bed, partly because of the worry that everyone is going to get pregnant, but mostly because of the noise. So I didn’t. I stayed up all night, totally forgetting that at 11 o’clock the next morning I was due at the Emirates stadium in the nuclear-free, vegan outreaches of north London. Happily, I had booked a driver. Unhappily, he turned up in the brand-new, second-generation Rolls-Royce Phantom. At first, all was well. Buoyed by a drink-fuelled contentment that nobody had cut their head off or given birth, I slumped into the vast rear seat in a Ready Brek glow of warm fuzziness. However, about 20 minutes later this had begun to wear off. And as we reached London, I started to worry that I might die. Ten minutes after that, I was worried I might not. There was a rolling tide of nausea in my

Rolls-Royce Ghost

You would have thought after a hundred years of practice the human being would be quite good at driving cars. Many of us are. Double mini roundabouts. Motorway slip roads. Entrances to multi-storey car parks. We can do them all while talking on the phone, eating a sandwich and thinking about having sex with a lady. But unfortunately an equal number are completely hopeless. Day in and day out I’m presented with a vast array of people who, to put it kindly, are to driving a car what Moira Stuart is to powerboat racing. Earlier this afternoon, I drove down the Fosse Way and the person in front, in a BMW — not a Peugeot — stopped at every roundabout and set off when an imaginary stopwatch in their head dictated they’d been stationary long enough. Yesterday, on the M25, I was overtaken by a chap in a Kia Picanto who was doing — at least — 95mph. This is 90mph faster than is prudent in such a terrible car. And, to make matters worse, he was swerving from lane to lane so violently that I

BMW X1

Buying a book to read on holiday is very much like buying a car. There’s a huge and bewildering choice and you are torn about what it is, exactly, that you want. If you are a man, you will know to avoid books called Tractors in the Ukraine and Appleblossom because it’ll be a plotless churn through the life of some dizzy bint who has lost her hat. You will not enjoy reading it and other people will laugh at you. What you want, of course, is a book in which a chisel-jawed agent called Clint Thrust attempts to find a hoard of Nazi gold while under attack from a madman’s fleet of nuclear-powered hunter-killer minisubs. But unfortunately, while this will be engrossing and wonderful, the cover will feature a girl in a bikini, a gold ingot with a swastika on it and a speedboat leaping through an explosion of some kind. This, too, will make you a laughing stock at the pool. An autobiography, then, seems to be the answer. You look wise. You look like you are interested in other people. And

BMW 328i

Almost every country has a unique detail that sets it apart from anywhere else. In France, for instance, you can’t walk for more than 100 yards without treading on a dog turd. Australia has too many dangerous animals. Germany has too much armpit hair. India needs a spring clean. And then we get to Sweden, where I spent a recent weekend. The little detail here is odd: there aren’t enough chairs. I stayed at a boutique hotel and on the first day met colleagues in the dining room. After a while we were asked to move because the table had been reserved by someone else for dinner. This was fine, except the only other available seating in the whole building was two ornamental sofas on the second-floor landing. They didn’t appeal, so we moved next door to the Grand. This is a big old- fashioned hotel and quickly we found a table with enough seating for all of us. However, each time one of us went to the bar or the lavatory, the waiter would take his or her chair away and give it to someon

Audi RS4 Avant

From a road-tester’s perspective, the good thing about Audi’s RS cars is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Some are nearly as good as their rivals from BMW. Some are forgettable. Some are dire. And then we get to the car you see pictured this morning: the new RS 4 Avant. Which has just provided me with one of the worst weeks of my entire motoring life. Bad is a small word that doesn’t even begin to cover the misery. Misery that was so all-consuming that, given the choice of using this car or taking the Tube, I would head straight for the escalator. Not just would. Did. Day one involved a trip to a place called Stoke Newington that pretends to be in London but in reality is an hour north of the capital, just outside Hull. And straight away I knew there was something terribly wrong. I have driven bumpy cars in the past. My own Mercedes is extremely firm. But the RS 4 was in a different league. It was like sitting in a spin-dryer that was not only on its final