I was driving home the other night in great pain. Some fool had gaffer-taped my arms to a chair, and in the course of struggling free I had removed several hairs and a great deal of skin, which had been badly burnt just two days earlier, on a volcano in Chile. Mine is not really a conventional job.
Anyway, I was in a bit of a hurry. Not only did I desperately need some cream to soothe the impromptu Brazilian on my arms but also it was the first night in about a hundred years when my entire family would be all together under the same roof at the same time.
I wanted to hear about my eldest daughter’s school trip to Auschwitz and how my son had got on in his rugby match. As a result, I decided I wasn’t really very interested in Mr Brown’s speed limits. The man’s a fool anyway. On the one hand he tells us about the importance of family values but on the other he insists that we drive home so slowly that our family will be fast asleep in bed by the time we get there.
However, because the half-term traffic would be light, and because I was driving my own very fast Mercedes CLK Black limited edition, I was confident I’d do the journey from Guildford to Chipping Norton in no more than 75 minutes. But alas, it was not to be.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the snarl-up symbols on my satellite navigation screen look quite so colourful. Every single road was either closed or jammed. And the Chris Evans radio show was nothing more than an endless stream of misery from Sally Traffic.
Roadworks on the M25 forced me onto the M4. The A404 past Marlow was solid so I took a lane through villages that haven’t appeared on any map since Dick Turpin was knocking about. Even the road from Oxford to my house was a non-stop stream of temporary traffic lights because some idiot at the council had decided that a pavement should be constructed.
A pavement? In the middle of nowhere? In the Cotswolds? Have you ever heard of anything so stupid in your entire life? Ramblers are entitled by law to come and sit by your fire and have sex with your wife whenever the mood takes them. They are allowed to walk wherever they please without let or hindrance and now I am denied the chance to get home and see my family because someone with a beard and a warped mind has decided they should be allowed to walk in the road as well.
We are talking about a madman, someone who cannot pass a shop window without being overcome by a need to lick it. Someone who may well be extremely dangerous. I think it is important we find him and kill him as soon as possible.
Because of him, and the traffic, and the roadworks on the M25, which are due to end after I’m dead, and the average-speed cameras and the Highway Wombles pretending to be policemen, it was one of the longest and most miserable journeys of my life.
But it could have been so much worse if my Mercedes hadn’t just come back from hospital in Norfolk.
When I first tested the 6.2-litre CLK Black, only 300 of which were built, I was overawed by its massive range of abilities. It was not just the thunderous 507 horsepower or the insane wheelarch extensions, though these two things on their own were probably enough. It was the knife-edge handling, the constant sense that you were driving something that was actually designed to kill you. It was called the Black, I suspected, because that was the colour of its heart.
I signed my review off by saying that no one’s life was complete without one and shortly afterwards put my money where my pen was. Yup. I bought one.
If I’m honest, it hasn’t been an entirely happy relationship. The seats are so hip-hugging that I am unable to offer lifts to fat girls. To make matters worse, I am also unable to explain why. “Because your arse is too big to fit in the seat” tends to make women cry.
It is also extremely difficult to fasten the seatbelts and impossible if you are wearing a coat. And then there’s the question of range. Like the standard CLK it has a 62-litre (13½-gallon) fuel tank, which is fine if the engine up front is a parsimonious diesel. But when it’s a massive V8, 62 litres does not get you to the end of the road.
Worse than this, though, was the ride. On a normal British road that has been dug up by slovenly apes and repaired by companies with both eyes fixed firmly on the bottom line, it was intolerable. I do mean that. Intolerable. So bad that I actually looked forward to it running out of fuel so I could get out and have a respite from the battering.
I knew what had happened, of course. I’d been so seduced by the power and the styling and the Grim Reaper handling that I’d overlooked the bad bits. Buying one had been a bit like choosing a wife based entirely on the size of her breasts.
Honestly, I was thinking of getting rid. But then I read something interesting. The Black comes with adjustable suspension. Lots of cars do, these days. And ordinarily my advice on this matter would be plain and simple. Leave it alone. A big car maker such as Mercedes-Benz knows an awful lot more about chassis dynamics than you do. If it thought the car could be improved by fiddling with the damper settings, it would have done so at the factory.
Adjustable suspension is nothing more than a sop to the ego of the terminally stupid. And something a salesman can talk about on a test drive: “Sir can tailor it to sir’s bespoke requirements, sir ...”
But I’m sorry, Mercedes has test tracks and millions of laptops. It employs thousands of doctors who have no sense of humour, just an insatiable thirst to do the best they can. So the notion that you, in a shed, can improve on their work with nothing but a screwdriver is as absurd as trying to improve on a Gordon Ramsay soufflé using nothing but what you have in your pocket.
I was chatting about this to a chap called Gavan Kershaw a few weeks ago. Gavan is the top chassis boffin at Lotus. He is responsible for the Elise, the extraordinarily balanced Evora and, I’m told, the marvellously supple new Jaguar XFR. Most of all, though, he is the chap who designed Top Gear’s test track.
He’s a very clever boy and I trust him, so when he said he would have a look at the Black, I agreed. Mainly because, no matter what he did, he couldn’t possibly make it worse.
He didn’t. It’s still not comfy. It’s not even halfway to a nod in the general direction of comfiness. The tyres are too low-profile and the chassis-strengthening beams too vigorous for that. But his twiddles do now mean that, for short periods behind the wheel, it is possible to think of something other than the pain.
And here’s the really good bit. By making it a bit softer, he has ensured it is now nearly two seconds faster on a lap round the Top Gear test track.
And the steering, already very good, is now sublime.
Normally, I don’t really care whether car bosses read my columns. But I do hope the people at Mercedes are reading this, partly because it might cause them to think that maybe a hard ride isn’t necessarily the way forward. But mostly because a fat bloke from Turnipshire (Gavan is a bit porky) has managed to improve what they presumably thought was perfect.
I know that sort of thing makes a German very unhappy. And achieving that once in a while compensates for the less savoury parts of my job.
The Clarksometer
Engine 6208cc, V8
Power 507bhp @ 6800rpm
Torque 465 lb ft @ 5250rpm
Transmission Seven-speed auto
CO2 369g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 4.3sec
Top Speed 186mph
Price £99,517
Road Tax Band M (£405 a year)
Clarkson’s verdict
REF: timesonline.co.uk
