An old saw popular in scientific circles says "Nothing dates as quickly as a vision of the future". You only have to look at some of the stuff that was on Tomorrow's World when I was a kid to know that this is very, very true.
So here's a rock solid prediction. Motoring is going to become more expensive for 2011. It always does, of course, and the VAT increase is a known and calculable burden, but what no one seems to have noticed is how much car insurance is going up.
I'm now just a few weeks away from being 48. I have had a clean driving licence for nine years, I have had no accidents and made no claims. As a proposition for the insurance business, I'm surely pretty good. An actuary's Powerpoint presentation would show me as a straight line running along the bottom of a graph. I'm not sure what else I can do short of promising not to drive anywhere, but still my premiums are soaring.
A man I know on the inside of insurance says it's all to do with the ever increasing cost of liability claims. This might be a con, but I'm inclined to believe him. If the compensation culture continues, there will come a point quite soon when the act of taking sole responsibility for propelling a ton-and-a-half of metal will become untenable to the legal machine, and driving will disappear.
Still, let's look on the bright side. The Rolls-Royce Ghost is the best-riding car in the world. I was genuinely blown away by the level of serenity this thing offers. Of all the things BMW could have done wrong with Rolls-Royce, mucking up the ride would have been the most lamentable. It also seemed the most likely, given the German trait of taking a potentially comfy car and ruining it with "sportiness".
Hats off to them, then. I always believed that, in the old days of R-R, using a word like "firm" or "handling" must have been a sackable offence. This must still be true if the Ghost is anything to go by.
What interests me about this, though, is that I don't believe the engineers at BMW and Royce know something on to which everyone else in the motor industry has failed to cotton. It's more a matter of philosophy and, to some extent, courage. I can sense, in a large Audi, the point at which the management started worrying that it might not be perceived as "a driver's car" and started spoiling the suspension. Rolls-Royce knows that nothing must be allowed to compromise comfort, which starts with the ride, not the upholstery. Top marks.
There was a dark moment in 2010 as well, however. Sometime in October, at the Virginia International Raceway, I suddenly found myself enjoying a track day. I was in the new Ferrari 458, which is reassuringly better than the one I have, and I cared about going faster than my rivals.
This has got to stop.
