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Some light reading...


motormouth23
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Hi, I'm seventeen and have dreams of one day becoming a motoring journalist. To help me get a head start I've started to have a go at noting some stuff down and trying to get some advice and criticisms passed over my work. Below is my first attempt at a longer feature and is about whether people in the U.K buy cars with their hearts or their heads. Have a flick through it and I look forward to reading your comments.

Thanks

For some reason the government seems to think we don’t fully understand the dangers of smoking. Over the last few years they have introduced telly adverts featuring clogged arteries, billboard campaigns depicting broken lungs and magazine double spreads encouraging us to not give up giving up. Sadly it seems this is not enough and the health secretary has taken things up a notch. The death threats found smeared across the fronts and backs of cigarette packets are no longer and are now to be replaced with graphic close ups of gigantic throat tumours and open heart surgery.

The problem is these pictures make for a perfect game of snaps, or collectables or indeed swaps. Smokers nationwide will spend their five minute fag breaks exchanging their stage three lung cancers for three sets of decaying teeth. They’re not going to look at the images and think “Christ, I’m going to die” or “Jesus, my throat’s full of tar”. They’re going to look at them and think “Dam, I’ve got another pair of yellowed finger tips”.

Clearly the government thinks we are a bunch of buffoons incapable of using our brains, but you know what, they’re right. Instead of common sense we are influenced by that inner child buried under years of mortgage repayments and trips to Ikea. In relation to smoking it means we smoke forty a day, when it comes to cars it means some buy a Toyota Prius.

The Prius is a car for people who care about emissions, carbon footprints and all other associated statistics of environmental drivel, however, there are a few problems. For a start it’s slow. Painfully, annoyingly, unnecessarily slow. You could solve a Rubik’s cube by the time this thing hit sixty. I know I know, when buying a Prius performance isn’t something you take into account but it’s not that economical either. Toyota claimed it would average around 65mpg, which it does, if all you do is take it on and off your drive (in reality it’s about 46mpg). It’s expensive too; the £18,000 price sticker is roughly £20,000 more than it’s worth. So what you’re left with is a motorised version of George Best post footballing heyday- slow, expensive and rather thirsty.

A car not bought with economy, expense or indeed George Best in mind is the Atom, a machine Ariel claim can be used on the road as well as the track. I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon in one and take it from me; it’s the fastest thing this side of a Bugatti Veyron. This is not a relative statement, it’s an absolute. You can actually feel the acceleration charge up through your legs, you can feel the wind bend your face and, strangely, you can feel the car coming alive around you. It rattles and buzzes, it clunks and clanks, it speaks to you through the pedals and the wheel. It’s bloody hard work though- by the end of the day I was a stiff as Heather Mills left leg.

The Atom is obviously aimed at men, middle aged ones at that. It can only be a prescription through which their midlife crisis is medicated as owning one defies any sort of logic. It’s brutal on the track and totally unusable on the road. However it’s not just blokes who are a bit illogical over cars, when it comes to women they’re just as bad.

My girlfriend has a Renault Modus, a car so appalling it makes cycling seem like a viable alternative. The engine vibrates like the San Andreas Fault, it rides like a Jack-Fulton’s Chest freezer, has A pillars like Janet Street Porters front teeth and standing on the brake pedal is like standing on a human stomach. But she loves it; of course she does because from the front it looks like it’s smiling at you and as all men know, there’s no better way to a woman’s heart.

Then you have my Mum. This is a woman who turned down a VW Polo, Renault Clio, Honda Civic, Ford Fiesta and a Mini Cooper because she’d seen a Peugeot 206 with red sports seats, a race car fuel cap and a shiny exhaust. She over looked the fact that it has a gear box as rough as a Northern lass and an interior cheaper than a £-Stretcher bargain bin. But that’s the thing with cars, they’re inanimate objects that get us from one place to another and back again. They have wheels, an engine and seats yet somehow they’re so much more than that. They’re an extension of who we are and what we do. That’s why Dell-Boy drove a Reliant Robin and Rowan Atkinson owns an NSX. It’s why Alan Partridge drives a Rover 825 and Paul McCartney walks.

However there is a slight anomaly in my theory- the elderly. These are people who, except for going to Tesco on a Tuesday, buy cars for reasons wholly unknown. To your average pensioner the car is no more interesting or important than concrete. Mention Jaguar, Audi, Bentley or Lamborghini to the tea-sippers at your local church coffee morning and watch as you bring their concept of time to an abrupt halt. They really couldn’t give a bugger if an MX5 handles better than a Honda S2000 or whether your loyalties lie with Ferrari or Porsche. They’ve lived most of their lives without such a luxury and struggle to embrace its concept and availability in the 20th century.

Having said that, the other day I was travelling home when from nowhere an adrenaline fuelled lunatic blew passed me in a bright red Civic Type R. As I looked across to pass forth my displeasure, I noticed something rather strange. The nutter was my eighty two year old Grandad, a man who clearly doesn’t need a pacemaker.

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That's a very commendable article, especially (not to come across as patronising) considering your age.

There is a definite hint of Clarkson in there, which is most certainly not a bad thing in my opinion....however as mentioned above, be careful not to let it slide into a chaos of metaphor. The over-use of these makes it slightly less fluid when reading for the first time.

The trick with Clarkson is, even though his columns are filled to the brim with witty inuendo & similies, you are not bombarded every sent by one,ence therefore capturing your attention, keeping you captivated and waiting for the next one.

All in all, I would say that this is a great attempt and would be very interested in reading your future work.

For a 17-year old to be as cynical as you appear is truely hilarious.....great stuff! 169144-ok.gif

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Loved it mate. Now get out there drive some fast cars, take some pics and make sure you post more reviews on here. As said by the majority on here for 17 its very very good. I read in Evo a few weeks back they were doing a competition for a new writer to take over the Gordon Murry column. I dont know if the competition is still on but it might be worth getting in touch (if you haven't already).

Again really good mate! 169144-ok.gif

One thing mate - it was in very bad taste to compare the Atom to the big fat monstrosity of a a Bucrappi. No one on here will agree with me, but I wouldn't be doing my duty if I wasnt going to try and warp you and your powerful metaphoric words from the off! 169144-ok.gif

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