Jeremy Clarkson's top 10 most popular car reviews of 2017
Jezza's biggest hits
IN BETWEEN creating TV shows and catching bouts of pneumonia, Jeremy Clarkson writes car reviews for Sunday Times Driving. Unsurprisingly, they’re a big hit with our readers, thanks to Clarkson’s famously uncompromising views, depth of knowledge and sharp wit. Sometimes, about halfway through his column, he even gives us some detail about the car he’s reviewing, although that’s not always the case.
We’ve looked at our web stats and here present, in reverse order, the 10 most popular reviews Clarkson has written for us in 2017.
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10 Ford Mustang 2.3 Ecoboost
Clarkson’s rating ★★★☆☆
Clarkson says “It really isn’t an out-and-out racer. It leans and it wobbles and it gets awfully wayward if you ask it to behave like a Porsche. But minding this is like buying a burger and then minding that it’s not a quail’s egg dipped in a pinch of celery salt. If you want a quail’s egg, you’ll need to spend twice as much.”
Read Not so much wild horse as mild pony
9 Seat Ateca
Clarkson’s rating ★★☆☆☆
Clarkson says “The trouble is that, these days, absolutely everyone wants a hatchback on stilts. They all want a commanding view of the road. And they don’t realise that soon it won’t be commanding at all, because everyone will be at the same height. Which means cars will have to keep on getting taller and taller until you need a ladder to get inside. And instead of airbags, you’ll have a parachute.”
Read Whatever you ask, this isn’t the answer
8 Audi RS 5 coupé
Clarkson’s rating ★★★★☆
Clarkson says “The bald figures of 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 155mph — or 174mph with the optional Dynamic package — tell only half the story. To get the other half, you have to go behind the wheel and open it up. And, ooh, you’ll be grinning. Actually, to start with, you won’t be grinning. You’ll be looking as though a lion has just come into your kitchen, because, God, it’s alarmingly quick off the line. I once saw someone put a mustard-covered hot dog up a police horse’s bottom. Well, the Audi sets off like that.”
Read Big roar, waggly tail: that’s my kind of lion
7 Vauxhall Insignia Grand Sport
Clarkson’s rating ★★★☆☆
Clarkson says “The only way Vauxhall can get people to pay attention is to build an absolutely superb car and sell it for 9p. And that’s nearly what it has done with the Insignia Grand Sport”
Read All mod cons, but 50 years too late
6 Land Rover Discovery
Clarkson’s rating ★★★☆☆
Clarkson says “The other issue is the sheer size of the damn thing. This is one of those cars in which you spend most of your time in suburbia, sitting at one end of a side road waiting for nothing to be coming the other way because it’s just too wide to squeeze by. You’d make faster progress on a cow.”
Read What you do in the woods is your affair
5 BMW 530d Xdrive
Clarkson’s rating ★★★★★
Clarkson says “Until there is a breakthrough in what we drive and who drives it and what powers it and what controls it, this is as good as it gets. It’s 130 years of development brought together in a package that’s as faultless as current technology permits.”
Read From second fiddle to rock guitar god
4 Honda Civic Type R
Clarkson’s rating ★★★☆☆
Clarkson says “Just look at it. Have you ever seen anything so wilfully yobbish? We’re told all its winglets and spoilers are there for a reason and I think I know what the reason is: to tell your neighbours you are very fond of football violence and shoplifting. And you have a knife.”
Read This yob will make you smile and cringe
3 Skoda Kodiaq
Clarkson’s rating ★★★☆☆
Clarkson says “We all know that behind the He Man name, this car is just a stretched Volkswagen Golf on stilts. We know it’s a seven-seat school-run special. We know it’s as suburban as pampas grass and prosecco. It’s a Volvo XC90 for women whose second-hand clothes business is not going quite as well as they’d hoped.”
Read Something for the grizzled fur traders of Woking
2 Volkswagen Golf GTI
Clarkson’s rating ★★★★☆
Clarkson says “The steering. The suspension. And even the option of a clever limited-slip front differential is the same as well. And that’s a good thing, if I’m honest. Because the old Golf GTI was the world’s best hot hatch. And the new one is as well. Partly because it isn’t new at all.”
Read They say it’s new, but thank heavens it’s not
1 Bugatti Chiron
Clarkson’s rating ★★★★★
Clarkson says “There is nothing made by any mainstream car maker that could hold a candle to the Chiron. A McLaren P1 doesn’t even get close. It’s like comparing me as a drummer with Ginger Baker … Plant your foot into the carpet in first gear emerging from a hairpin, and every single one of the horsepowers you’ve engaged and every single pound foot of torque is transferred with no fuss, and no wheelspin, directly into forward motion. It’s acceleration and G-force so vivid, you can actually feel your face coming off. It’s speed that hurts.”
Read I’ve done fast and silly fast, but this is flaming ridiculous
