What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Squeeze in, Queenie, there’s space next to Tom Cruise ^{Kia Cee-d ‘2’ 1.6 GDI}

Despite an idiotic decision by some halfwit in the television gallery to run credits over the climactic fireworks display, I think most people were fairly impressed by Gary Barlow’s jubilee concert at the top of the Mall.

Certainly, as I watched the elderly gentleman with dyed hair belting out ‘Live And Let Die’, and Buckingham Palace exploded, and the crowds waved their flags in an orgy of hysteria, the whole extravaganza felt like a giant raised finger to Hank, Pierre, Fritz and Bruce. ‘This, people of the world, is how you do it.’

At the time, I was on a hill with some friends from the sleepy town of Chipping Norton, lighting a beacon, setting off fireworks, drinking wine and singing the national anthem. We felt warm. We felt fuzzy. We felt proud to be British.

But we weren’t allowed to feel proud or warm or fuzzy for long because by Wednesday the sniping had started. People were writing to the Guardian saying that the whole spectacle had been ruined because there were no ethnic minorities in the royal box.

Rubbish. The Queen is German, the Archbishop of Canterbury is Welsh and if Prince Philip had not been in hospital we’d have had a Greek as well. The royal family is, in fact, a shining example of diversity at its absolute best, and the royal box was actually a rainbow nation.

This didn’t stop the naysayers. They argued that the whole weekend had been a celebration of class and privilege, that it had failed to elicit much support away from SW1, that it had been too expensive, that the weather had done more damage than anyone would admit and that the BBC’s coverage had been lamentable.

Strangely, however, no one seems to have picked up on what, as far as I can tell, was the only mistake of the whole weekend: when the royal family emerged from one of the endless lunches, most were ferried to the next event in a fleet of Volkswagen vans.

I’m sorry, but how did this happen? The courtiers and the advisers left no stone unturned to ensure protocol was followed and dignity maintained. Mrs Queen, for instance, did not clap at the end of that ethnic song in the concert. The Duchess of Cambridge’s chapel hat pegs were kept in check. The red carpets were just so, and the show went on even when the archbishop’s much talked-about global warming lashed the flotilla with icy winds and torrential rain. And yet when someone suggested the minor royals be ferried about, under the watchful gaze of an admiring world, in a fleet of vans, someone said, ‘Yeah. OK.’

It’s not OK. You can’t put Prince Harry in a van. Not in a country that makes Jaguars and Range Rovers and Aston Martins and Bentleys. Could they not have rustled up a fleet of Rolls-Royces, the second-best-known Anglo-German success story?

Top Gear’s live show has been able to borrow a fleet of Morgan three-wheelers, so I feel sure the small company in Malvern, Worcestershire, would have been only too happy to step up to the mark with cars for the jubilee. And Prince Harry would have liked that.

It is extraordinary that people never really think about the wheels on which they will arrive at important events. They think about the frock and the hair and the shoes and the posture. And then they turn up in front of the cameras in a van.

It’s not just the royal family who get this wrong, either. Last month officers from Strathclyde police arrived in London to arrest Andy Coulson, having made the journey in a Hyundai people carrier. They reckoned they had enough evidence to charge the former editor of the News of the World, and I was thinking, Really? You can’t even choose a decent car.

Then we had Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, turning up at the Leveson inquiry in a Toyota Prius. What kind of twisted logic was used to make that look a good idea? ‘Ha-ha. Mr Hunt will be facing some difficult questions today, but if he arrives in an eco-car, people will feel well disposed towards him.’ I didn’t. I thought that if he’d really wanted his arrival to take our mind off the issue of the day, he should have rocked up on a white stallion.

We see similar mistakes at film premieres. Recently I went to one for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster. The stars had turned out in force. There were several people from The Voice, many former X Factor semi-finalists and a number of soap stars. And all of them had turned up in gleaming silver Mercedes S-classes. Why? Each of these people is very keen to climb the pole of stardom and therefore each needs to stand out from the crowd. You’re not going to do that at a premiere in an S-class. You need to be different. Which brings me neatly on to the subject of this morning’s missive: the recently modified Kia Cee’d.

Twelve years ago Kia started to make a hatchback called the Rio, which, along with the three-cylinder Hyundai Accent diesel, was very probably the worst car the world had ever seen. Styled by someone who was either blind or just being stupid, it looked ridiculous and was powered by an engine that belonged in a Russian cement mixer.

The Rio demonstrated to the people of neighbouring North Korea that their leader had a point.

Here it was sold mostly to stupid idiots for whom the attraction of the latest registration digits was far more important than reliability, comfort, economy or speed. People called it ‘cheap and cheerful’. But there’s no such thing. There is ‘expensive and cheerful’ or ‘cheap and rubbish’. It was the latter.

Today things have changed so drastically that we use a Kia as our Reasonably Priced Car on Top Gear. And the new model is the latest incarnation of that, the latest incarnation of a car that has been driven by more stars than almost any other. This, then, is the ideal film premiere arrival car.

But what’s it like when you’re not pulling up at a red carpet? Well, happily there isn’t much space left, because, if I’m honest, there’s not much to say.

It costs broadly the same as any of the other thirty-nine mid-sized family hatchbacks from Japan and Europe. It therefore needs to be just as good. And it is.

I explained recently that the car market had come alive in recent months as every manufacturer tried new ideas to meet stringent emissions regulations. But the Kia plays no part in any of this. With the exception of the now ubiquitous feature that stops the engine at the lights and then starts it again when you depress the clutch (huh, call yourself a clutch?), the new Cee’d is about as cutting edge as the bathing platform on a Sunseeker.

It’s simply a good-looking collection of what’s been learnt over the past 110 or so years. It’s plain. If it were a loaf of bread, it would not be sliced. It would not be covered in bits. There’d be no ears of corn in every mouthful. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Except it means I have nothing of any great relevance to say here. There is as much space as you would expect. The back seats fold down. There is a radio. It stops and steers and goes just as well as any other medium-priced hatchback. There’s a 1.4-litre petrol engine with 98 brake horsepower and a 1.6 unit that develops 133 bhp. Pretty much the same as every other 1.6 on the market.

There are also two diesel engines on offer – a 1.4 CRDi and a 1.6 CRDi – along with several levels of trim. The layout is good. The radio is not in the roof. The warranty is long. It’s safe, so you’re unlikely to be killed in action. And that’s all we have space for, so let’s roll the credits, and move on.