What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

The old duffer trots out in boy-racer colours ^{Skoda Faiba vRS1.4 TSI DSG}

In his first year in office the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, announced that he would scrap the M4 bus lane, stop funding speed cameras and raise the motorway limit to 80. What he should have done next is gone home and started a well-earned retirement. But, sadly, when you are the transport secretary you are expected to go to work every day. And, of course, when someone is at work they are duty-bound to do stuff and think of things. This is fine if you are a doctor or a telephone repair man but when you are transport secretary it’s hard to think of things that make any sense.

This is a problem when you are invited to speak on the Today programme. You can’t very well sit there and say you’ve not thought of any ideas, because people will think you have been lazy. So you have to come up with something. And that’s what Hammond did recently. He took a deep breath and said he was going to get the police to clamp down on boy racers.

Of course, this was an excellent thing to say because the people who listen to the Today programme do not have gel in their hair, or acne. Or an electric-blue Citroën with a huge exhaust pipe and no suspension.

Radio 4 people think that boy racers sit in the social mix between rapists and Hitler. So they will have leapt up from their Shackletons wingbacks, delirious with joy that Mr Hammond was finally going to make their life on the road a little less terrifying.

Sadly, however, if you examine the details of Hammond’s half-formed excursion into the world of middle England tub-thumping you see that it doesn’t make any sense at all. For instance, he says he’s going to get the police to clamp down on the lunatic fringe, to which I say this: what police?

The last time I saw a jam sandwich patrolling the motorway, it was a Ford Granada. Today you get Highways Agency traffic officers and the odd plod-dog van, but actual police? They’re all at the station, learning how to climb ladders.

Then we get to what Hammond thinks constitutes boy racing: tailgating and undertaking.

Quite what he has against undertakers, I don’t know. In my experience they drive very carefully. Unless, of course, he means people who overtake on the left. In which case he’s just plain wrong.

These days I undertake other cars as a matter of course. And I’m fifty-one, which means I’m not much of a boy. The problem is that in the olden days everyone on the road had at least a rudimentary grasp of lane discipline. But today – how can I put this without sounding as though I’m from the Daily Mail? – many of Britain’s motorists learnt the art of driving in more exotic parts. And they simply have no idea, as they trundle up the M40 at 50 mph in their £200 Toyota Camry, that they should keep left.

You can flash your lights, indicate, make hand gestures, huff, puff and die of a heart attack but it will make no difference. They don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong.

That’s why I glide by on the left. And if I am stopped by one of Hammond’s non-existent policemen, I shall explain that if I had the space to undertake, then the person around whom I drove must have had the space to pull over. He should therefore be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention.

Then there’s the issue of tailgating. This is done exclusively by people in Audis with Montblanc pens, Breitling watches, Oakley sunglasses, those shirts with horses on them and a fondness for squash. I don’t know what you’d call people such as this – ‘awful’ springs to mind – but they’re not boy racers.

So when Hammond says that he will be targeting undertakers and tailgaters, he’s actually targeting the victims of the middle-lane hogs, and people who play squash. Unless he really is talking about people who drive you to the church when you’re dead. In which case it truly is time for him to stop thinking of things and doing stuff.

Actual boy racers, I should imagine, are now getting very irritated because they’ll have seen the picture of the car I’m reviewing this morning, with its white roof and its big wheels, and they’ll be thinking, Get on with it, you imbecile.

So get on with it I shall. It’s a Skoda Fabia vRS, and the last version of this car was OK. I liked it a lot, even though it waded into battle with a diesel engine. And that’s a bit like competing in a 100-metre running race while wearing wellies. The new one has a 1.4-litre petrol engine that is supercharged and turbocharged. The result is 178 bhp, and the result of that is 0 to 60 in a little over seven seconds and a top speed of 139 mph. Or 140 if you buy the aerodynamically cleaner estate version.

Weirdly, the people at Skoda have sent me a comparison chart, which shows that in terms of performance the vRS is a little slower than the Clio Renaultsport 200 and the Vauxhall Corsa VXR. They’ve also sent me a laminated card saying that the No. 1 key feature of their car is that it has a three-point seatbelt. It’s almost as though they don’t want me to like it.

And that’s fortunate, because I don’t. There are some things, though, that are rather good. I like the styling especially. I’m not sure why, but it reminds me of a bemused and slightly cross second world war squadron leader. And I like the way it has a white roof.

But most of all I like the price. It’s £16,265 and, although Skoda doesn’t provide figures to show this, it is way cheaper than every one of its rivals. Even if you fit the useless satnav and blue teeth and climate control, it’s still £1,000 less than the Volkswagen Polo GTI. And that’s especially odd, because underneath it’s exactly the same car. Same engine. Same everything.

So what’s it like to drive? Well, the seats are comfy and the ride is surprisingly pliant, given that it’s running on wafer-thin low-profile tyres. But there’s a problem. This is a turbocharged and supercharged hot hatchback, so it should make you want to drive like you are on fire. It should encourage you to pass every other road user on whatever side takes your fancy and never brake for corners. Hot hatchbacks are supposed to fizz but the vRS doesn’t.

The double-clutch flappy-paddle gearbox is reluctant to change, and the steering is too low-geared. Couple this with the noisiest tyres in Christendom and what you mostly want to do in this car is slow down for a bit of peace and quiet. It is horribly noisy.

And, while I don’t mind the interior, I must say it’s a bit gloomy. Perhaps that’s why the vRS looks like a bemused squadron leader. Because it’s not really a hot hatch, so ‘why the bloody hell has someone painted me the colour of an Opal Fruit?’.

You are better off with a Fiat 500 or a Mini or a Citroën DS3 or a Twingo Renaultsport 133. These are the real boy-racer cars. The Skoda looks like it might be a laugh but actually it isn’t.