Clarkson's Doppelganger

Yes, I know, I am not British, but each day I find one more thing I have in common with the esteemed Jeremy Clarkson. His latest review of the Alfa Romeo MiTo explains it all. You can read it here, or you can read the excerpt below. I will put in bold the things we have in common.

"I suppose that in the days when your fishmonger knew your name and what sort of cod you liked on a Friday, “brand loyalty” made sense. Now we live in a world of supermarkets and corporations, it is the most ridiculous thing on all of God’s green earth. No matter how many loyalty cards you have in your wallet.

That said, I am the worst offender. Even though I know Virgin is the best airline, I always try to fly BA. Even though I know HSBC is in fairly good shape, I bank at Barclays. Even though I know the new style of Levi’s reveals my butt crack when I bend over, I would still never buy a pair of Wranglers.

And this brings me neatly onto the question of watches. For some time now I’ve been on the hunt for a new one but the choice is tricky. I couldn’t have a Breitling because I don’t own an Audi. I couldn’t have a Calvin Klein because they are pants, I couldn’t have a Gucci because I’m not a footballist’s wife, I couldn’t have a TW Steel because my wrist isn’t big enough to sport something that can be seen from space, I couldn’t have a Tissot because I’m not eight and the only thing in the world worse than a fake Rolex is a real one.

Have you noticed something odd about Rolexes? Especially the modern ones that wind automatically when you move your wrist about? A great many owners wear them on their right hand. I jump to no conclusions here but you can feel free. (I agree)

Mostly, though, I cannot wear any of these watches because I am an Omega man. I have worn a Seamaster for years, not because James Bond has one and not because Neil Armstrong wore something by the same maker on the moon but because on the day I went away to school my parents gave me a Genève Dynamic.

The trouble is that for the past few years Omega has been the Pillsbury dough of Swiss watches. The Terry and June. Omegas were dreary. They were boring to behold. They were Vectras in a world of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The De Ville Prestige, for example, was plainly designed by someone who had a black-and-white telly.

This filled me with despair. I wanted a watch. For the same reasons that I bank at Barclays and wear Levi’s, it had to be an Omega, and it just wasn’t coming up with the goods. It was like Leeds United. Once the home of Peter Lorimer and Gary Sprake but now an also-ran bunch of unimaginative clod-hopping no-hopers.

And then one day, in Hong Kong, I saw it. A new Omega. It’s called the Railmaster and it is a thing of unparalleled beauty. There is no button that owners think will call for help if they find themselves in a crashing helicopter on Kilimanjaro, it is not waterproof to 8,000 metres, there is no stopwatch, there is no swivelling bezel to tell you how much air you have left in your tanks and you even have to wind it up every morning or it will stop. Plainly this is a watch for the sedentary soul. The man with no hang glider or mini sub in his garage. I bought it in an instant.

And so it goes with Alfa Romeo. My loyalty to the brand began when I had an old GTV6. It let the air out of its tyres most nights. It would weld its twin-plate clutch to the flywheel if you didn’t drive it for a day or two. And once, it dumped its gear linkage onto the propshaft when I was doing about 60mph. The noise that resulted was extraordinary: a bit like Brian Blessed being raped. (Sounds like my Camaro)

Even the design was silly. It was a hatchback but the rear seat couldn’t be folded down because someone who’d had too much wine had put the petrol tank between the cabin and the boot. And the driving position had to be experienced to be believed. The only way you could get comfortable was if you had arms that were 6ft long, a compressed spine and feet attached directly to your knees.

You might expect me to say that I forgave it all these trespasses because it was so glorious to drive. But it wasn’t. In fact, not since the Alfasud has there been an Alfa which is demonstrably better than the competition. And now, of course, Alfa is just a division of Fiat.

However . . . I have argued many times that owning an Alfa is a portal through which all petrolheads must pass if they genuinely want to know what it is that differentiates a car from a toaster or a washing machine."

To read the rest of the review, go here.