Excerpt
GT90 in a flat spin Earls Court becomes the fashion capital of the western world this week as the London Anorak Show opens its doors to members of the public. Better known as the Motor Show, families will be donning their finest acrylic fibres and braving the Piccadilly Line so that they may gawp at all that’s new and shiny. However, if you want to see all that’s really new and shiny, you need to stay on the Piccadilly Line until you arrive at Terminal Four. And then you should catch a plane to Japan. The trouble is that the London Motor Show clashes with the Tokyo Motor Show, and there’s no surprises for guessing which one is rated most highly by the exhibitors. So, if a car manufacturer has spent all year developing a new concept to wow the crowds at an exhibition, it goes to Japan, leaving London with the mainstream stuff, the kind of cars that are parked in your street anyway. That said, it will be your first chance to see the Ferrari F50 (which makes the show worthwhile all on its own) and the TVR Cerbera, but as its astonishing engine will be off, onlookers will be deprived of its USP. Other notable debutantes include the MGF, the Renault Megane, the really rather nice Fiat Bravo and, of course, the fascinating and interesting Vauxhall Vectra which, in case you can’t find it, is the one that looks pretty much the same as a Cavalier. However, pretty well all the one-off concept cars will be in Tokyo, and in case you’re wondering why we don’t move the dates of our show, I should remind you that we once did. But because it no longer straddled the half-term break, no one came. And anyway, the new dates meant we were competing with Paris. And all the manufacturers thought France more important than London anyway. We could, of course, move our event to June but I’ve just checked and there’s a show on then in Pune, a small town 120 miles from Bombay. And I’m pretty damn sure that’s where the car makers would concentrate their resources. The upshot of all this is that you won’t be able to see the Ford GT90, and that’s a pity because it’s America’s first attempt at a supercar. At this point, I’m sure, Wilbur and Myrtle will be running around waving their arms in the air and pointing to the Corvette ZR-1 and the Dodge Viper, saying that these are supercars. But they’re not. And nor is that absurd Vector which is made in agonizingly small numbers in California, and nor was the Pontiac Fiero. Supercars are what the Europeans do. We are the only ones who know how to make a car go quickly . . . round corners. People at Ford in Detroit say the old GT40 was a supercar and that they made it, but again, they’re wrong. It may have had an American engine but the rest of it, the important stuff, was as American as Elgar. The GT90 is their first attempt and it seems to work rather well, because it is capable of 235mph, making it the fastest road car in the world. It does 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds so it is pretty sprightly on that front too. And because it is mid-engined, light and sits on a modified Jaguar XJ220 chassis, it should be pretty nifty through the bends too.