Jeremy Clarkson on Honda Accord Type S

Audi RS 3: Too tame for the special flair service

‘I know that it’s a limited edition car, but if I were spending £40,000, I’d want it to feel and look and be a lot more special’

God made a bit of a mistake when he was designing women. He made the birth canal so narrow that babies have to be born when they are nowhere near ready for life in the outside world.

A newborn horse can run about and feed itself five seconds after emerging from the back of its mum. And it’s the same story with dogs. My labrador gave birth to a litter of nine puppies while asleep, firing them out like a Thai hooker fires ping pong balls. And within moments they were up and about, being doggish.

A human baby, though, is not capable of anything. For week after interminable week, it can’t sit up, crawl, speak or operate even rudimentary electronic equipment and sees absolutely nothing wrong with sitting in a puddle of its own excrement. Babies are useless. Stupid, mewling, puking noise trumpets that ruin life for anyone within half a mile.

Unless, of course, the baby is yours, in which case you rejoice in its ability to grip your finger with its tiny little hand and are keen to take it on as many aeroplanes as possible. Why is this? Why is your baby so perfect and wonderful when everyone else’s is as irritating as a microlight on a peaceful summer’s evening?

We see the same problem with literature. There is a book called Versailles: The View from Sweden. It’s excellent in a game of charades, but as a light read I should imagine it’s not excellent at all. Unless you could get a copy signed by the author. Then you’d love it.

I have a copy of Monty Python’s Big Red Book that is signed by all of the Pythons and as a result it is my most treasured possession. The one thing I would rescue if my house were to catch fire.

We see this specialness in other things too. There’s a little spot just below the village of Keld in the Yorkshire Dales. It has grass and some trees and a bit of sky, all the ingredients you would find on a roundabout in Milton Keynes. And yet the spot I’m talking about is special and a roundabout is not. Why? Dunno. It just is.

Then there’s the iPhone. As soon as I was shown some pictures and discovered you could enlarge them by moving your fingers apart on the screen, I had to have one. I treat it with great care and become very defensive when BlackBerry enthusiasts are critical.

It is just some wires and a bit of plastic. It’s not signed by Steve Jobs; I did not give birth to it and took no part in its creation. It is not unique and yet, to me, it is special. And that, in my view, is what makes the difference between a product that you want and a product that you need.

Specialness is particularly important when it comes to cars. Recently, on Top Gear, I drove something called the Eagle Speedster. It was a modern take on the old Jaguar E-type and in many ways it was a bit rubbish. There were no airbags or antilock brakes, and while the lowered, more steeply raked windscreen meant the car looked good, I couldn’t see where I was going. And yet, despite the shortfalls, it is the most special car I’ve driven. Do I need it? No. Do I want it? Yes. More than my left leg.

And now let us spool forwards to the Nissan Pixo. This is the cheapest new car on sale in Britain today and in many ways it is excellent. You do get power steering and antilock braking and I have no doubt that it will be a faithful and reliable servant for many years. And yet, despite all this, I want one about as much as I want a bout of herpes.

There is a similar issue with the new McLaren MP4-12C. It is a superb piece of engineering and, my God, it’s fast. But the excitement and joy and specialness that you get from a Ferrari or a Lamborghini is missing. You sense that it’s the brainchild not of a man called Horacio or Ferruccio or Enzo, but of a man called Ron.

So what about the Audi RS 3? A roundabout? Or my special place in Swaledale?

Well, fans say that because it has a turbocharged five-cylinder engine and four-wheel drive, it harks back to the original quattro, which, in second-generation 20-valve guise, was one of the most special cars ever made. So it has good genes.

Good manners, too. Unlike the original quattro, the engine is not mounted several yards in front of the front axle, which means that the catastrophic understeer of yesteryear is gone. You just get normal understeer, which is dreary but not fatal.

The power’s good, though. And so’s the speed. And so is the noise and so is the seven-speed dual-clutch flappy-paddle gearbox. Provided you are at the Nürburgring and your family’s life depends on your lap time. If, however, you are not at the Nürburgring and your family is not being held hostage, you may find it a bit irritating.

It’s a problem with all these gearboxes. They’re good when you are travelling fast, but in town they jerk. You don’t get the creep of a normal automatic or the slip from a clutch pedal in a normal manual. I realise, of course, that flappy paddles mean better emissions, which is good news for polar bears, but for smooth driving, they’re pretty hopeless.

Now we must address comfort. There isn’t much, because, like the gearbox, the suspension is set up for fast lap times. It’s not as bad as in some cars but you do need to scour the road ahead carefully so that you don’t accidentally run over a pothole.

Inside, you are reminded that while the RS 3 is a new car, it’s based on a car that is not new at all. It feels old-fashioned. Boring. And it’s time I mentioned this: there’s a wee bit too much choice.

An example. Would you like the climate control to deliver 17.5 degrees or 18? And what would your passenger like? I’m sorry, but half-a-degree increments are plainly silly. You either want to be chilled or warmed. Two settings would do.

It’s the same story with the sat nav. Yes, we like to be able to adjust the scale of the map. But in the Audi you twiddle the knob for 90 minutes and it zooms in from something like 900 metres to the centimetre to 875 metres to the centimetre. That’s not necessary.

Neither is the price. It’s just shy of £40,000, which is a lot for what, when all is said and done, is a fancy Golf. Yes, I know that it’s a limited edition car and that, as a result, second-hand values will be good, but if I were spending that much on a car, I’d want it to feel and look and be a lot more special.

That’s a trick BMW has pulled off very well with the 1-series M coupé. It’s about the same size and price as the Audi and delivers the same sort of get-up-and-go. But while you emerge from every trip in the Beemer wearing an enormous grin, you emerge from the Audi smiling only because the trip is over.