Financial Gazette (Harare)
Richard Wiley
22 September 2005
opinion
Harare — As a youngster, I have to admit to having been rather partial to air travel but as the years have rolled by, so has my enthusiasm for this form of travel.
Quite how the flight service director can exhort 370 people- actually, make that about 320 people as those up front don't count-crammed into a confined space to "enjoy" their confinement is beyond me, but the main thing is to get to where you're going safely and on time and on that score, I can't fault SAA.
In this case, London was simply a stepping stone to our escapade by Audi S4 to Spa Francorchamps and then the Frankfurt Motor Show. So it was that my cellphone alarm terminated my slumbers (and my snoring, my wife would assert) at what I thought was 3.30am on September 9. A rapid exit from my sack into the shower via that place that shouldn't really be mentioned was followed by a period of complete calm occasioned by the fact that my travelling accomplice had failed to emerge from his room. The penny then dropped that I had failed to re-set the clock to UK time and I was therefore running around needlessly one hour ahead of schedule.
Anyway, enough of domestic issues and on to the issues at hand which of course, all revolve around motoring. The aforementioned S4 was nosed through Twickenham and on to the M25 at around 4.15 which meant that traffic was thankfully light but still pretty horrendous by Zim standards.
Twenty-five thousand miles had failed to unearth even the smallest rattle on this beautifully-built car and the 344 hp V8 motor sounded as mellifluous as ever while providing a level of punch which would have Mike Tyson searching for superlatives. Just for a change, we'd elected to cross the channel by ferry which takes some 90 minutes to Calais.
Once in France, the satnav guided us along familiar, billiard smooth motorways in the direction of Brussels and Liege and on to the area known as Francorchamps. It was really nice to see paint and proper signage wherever we went and equally nice to discover that "pothole" is a word which doesn't exist in Europe. But all was not sweetness and light as we had some difficulty in locating our hotel which was described in the tour operator's brochure as being "close to" the circuit.
To me, that would indicate up to 10 kms distant but how wrong we were. Even a completely unhelpful lady in an Alfa -Romeo dealership genuinely near the Spa circuit claimed she had never heard of the area we sought nor the hotel specifically.
Methinks she was just being obtuse as can be the wont of French speakers in the presence of lost English speakers, but we were subsequently horrified to discover through the wonders of satnav that the area known as Wirtzfeld was some 70 kms away. Our place of residence was not quite what we envisaged and it turned out to be 44 kms from the circuit by the shortest route which all tells you to beware of what you read in brochures.
All this mattered not a jot on that Friday afternoon as a tropical downpour thwarted all our intentions to go and watch what turned out to be an aborted second practice session for the Belgian GP.
The cloudburst also made a mockery of our unusually early departure so, heaven forbid, the opportunity arose to sample the very palatable beers produced by our hosts.
The GP itself is now the stuff of history so I won't bore anyone with a blow by blow account of what transpired. Suffice to say that me and my mate go to GPs primarily to watch Michael Schumacher. We revel in his every move and ensure our seats are as close to opposite Scuderia Ferrari as possible so as not to miss a thing.
It should therefore be understandable that Takuma Sato's kamikazi act at the entrance to La Source hairpin in which he smashed Michael's Ferrari into submission was not well received. The incident didn't just incense us-it incensed by far the majority of the crowd who greeted Michael's return to the pits on foot with tumultuous cheers and a crescendo of air horns while Takuma was roundly booed.
Needless to say, we added our voice to the booers.
Our state of disappointment with the outcome of the race together with our less-than-enthusiastic acceptance of our accommodation prompted us to depart for Germany on Sunday afternoon instead of Monday morning.
Without Satnav, we would have been totally lost for the simple reason that we started out from a very rural location and were therefore forced to use B roads for a couple of hours.
This entailed going through lots of villages, passing even more slow traffic with lots of wheel twirling in the beautiful countryside. It also provided ample opportunity to sample the simply devastating acceleration provided by the S4, the engine of which emits a deep V8 drone at lowish revs but which transforms into a refined, howling hum as 7000 rpm rapidly approaches.
It wasn't until we reached the environs of Mayen that we accessed an autobahn and it didn't take long to be reminded that the German roads in the main don't compare with their French equivalents. Many of these roads are old and/or are being reconstructed and the majority also feature rather unkempt verges.
There are, in fairness, also many sections like billiard tables, and traffic density permitting, it's possible to get a real crack on without fear of Herr Plod leaping out of the copious bushes with a dreaded radar gun.
Our destination was a quaint village situated south of Frankfurt on the Rhine River called Nierstein. The ever-trustworthy satnav spared us the hustle and bustle of the big city and it certainly proved its worth as it guided us through five major autobahn interchanges in a mere 40 kms.
It would be a nightmare trying to negotiate so many off-ramps and parallel access roads without this essential aid.
By the time we reached our hotel, the sun had well and truly set and fatigue ensured that our sampling of the great German brews was curtailed somewhat more rapidly than is the norm.
What was on our minds more than anything else was the morrow's Frankfurt Motor Show, the greatest such exhibition on the face of the earth.
After all, there was lots to look forward to in the form of global or European premieres of the Volkswagen Eos and Jetta, not to mention the revolutionary turbo and supercharged VW 1,4 litre motor which produces an amazing 170 hp, the Porsche Cayman S, the Lexus IS Series, the Peugeot 407 Coupe, the Fiat Punto, the Jaguar XK, the Mercedes S-Class, the Audi RS4, the Audi Q7, the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, the Golf R32, the BMW 130i, the Toyota RAV4 and many, many more. How could a man sleep with all this on his mind?
Find out next week when Top Gear brings you the low-down on what really set tongues wagging in the huge fairground that hosts this simply magical motor show.
In the meantime, you might be interested to view the accompanying photograph of the voluptuous rear end of Porsche's 911 Carrera 4S.
I regard this as the sexiest most appealing rear end of any car around-just look at those bulging flanks-but the picture was taken primarily to illustrate that the rear reflectors within the lamp housing work very, very effectively. For all the world, it looks as though this Porsche had its lights on, but that was not the case at all.
What you are seeing is the reflection from the camera flash which all goes to prove that the regular harrassment dished out to local motorists for "failing to display separate rear reflectors" is the biggest load of hogwash ever dished up. In fact, it's enough to make you see red.
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