Clarkson on Cars by Jeremy Clarkson Page A

items on the television called
Hot Property
and
The City Programme
. Their success is measured by the initials on the back of their cars.
    The mutants understand this grading system too. The wise elders say they know it because in the past, they too lived among us in the real world.
    They know that they will get more ecstasy from The Man if they break into the cars with an ‘i’ on the back.
    This is why, in the past two weeks, I have woken up on successive Sunday mornings to find one of my car windows completely reshaped. Go to bed and it’s a flat piece of green tinted glass. Wake up and it’s many immensely tiny pieces of glass spread over a huge area. Most of them, though, are in the heater vents where they can rattle.
    Trouble is, I am the sort of person who enjoys confusing the mutants. They break into my car because it looks as though it will sport the sort of stereo that can be exchanged for six or seven tabs. In fact, it is worth, in earth money, about £3.25.
    Nowadays, they break into my car to laugh at it.
    The mutants have left me alone for two years but with the emergence of Acid House music, their need for spiritual enlightenment is ever greater. Make no mistake, no one can be safe until the council weld up the manhole covers and pump cyanide gas into the web of tunnels beneath.
    You might imagine as you sit there in your Next suit that even if your car is broken into, so long as nothing is stolen – all is well: if that’s the case, you obviously don’t drive a Honda.
    If you
don’t
drive a Honda, you will be able to telephone one of the mobile glass repair outfits that fill 85 per cent of the
Yellow Pages
and a cheery man in an overall and an Escort van will come and kiss it better.
    Some say these men are mutant spies who are cashing in on the antics of their blood brothers in the sewers but this is only conjecture. Probably.
    If you
do
drive a Honda, you will spend Sunday ringing these people and becoming increasingly fed up with them calling you guv and saying they can do nothing until Monday.
    You just
know
they’re the sort of people who hold their cigarettes between thumb and forefinger with the hot bit pointing inwards. You
know
they spent every minute of their state education dreaming of being a taxi driver. They have the banter.
    Why, you enquire, can they not send round one of their men? Because, they say, Honda will not let them carry original equipment stock.
    Later, their bosses are more precise. Er, it’s not that they won’t let us actually. We just don’t because the Japanese change their models every six minutes and glass manufacturers in Europe can’t keep up.
    This means those of you who drive a Honda that’s been subjected to the attention of a mutant on Saturday night cannot get it mended until Monday morning. And this in turn means you must hope the cardboard you insert in the hole is a sufficient barrier to another mutant attack on the Sunday night.
    When you do get to a dealer, he will lighten your wallet to the tune of 90 quid. And break your door. Well, he broke mine.
    So I reckon a two-pronged attack is in order and I am volunteering to the last vestiges of law enforcement in this country as a back-room boffin.
    First we must look at the root cause of the problem. That leads inexorably to the conclusion that all state schools must be closed down. Never mind opting out of local authority guidance. Close them. All of them. Now.
    While the teachers with their beards and corduroy jackets are trying to teach the urchins how to do binary numbers and where Africa is, the kids at the back are thumbing through Vauxhall manuals to see how best to get round a dead lock.
    Then we must attack those who have already moved underground. That means posting teams of heavily armed ex-boxers outside manhole covers, with Uzis, flamethrowers and some of those guns Christopher Walken used in
Dogs of War
.
    You probably think all this is a load of rubbish, but before you reach for the headed