► ‘Steve Coogan. He’s a V12 comedian in a four-pot world’
► Who better to help us deliver a Ferrari 599 to Goodwood?
► From CAR magazine, September 2006
We’re somewhere in the middle of France, I’ve no idea where exactly, when it occurs to me that I’m in the passenger seat of a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, being driven at some speed by a man who used to open the door of his Morris Minor with a pen knife and once drove his dad’s Volvo 244 estate home with a length of string tied around a broken throttle pedal.
When you’re tasked to deliver a new Ferrari from Maranello to the UK, a famous co-driver isn’t obligatory but we thought we’d invite one anyway. If I was to describe Steve Coogan as Britain’s funniest man, it would be lazy and reductive. Besides which, Eddie Izzard is arguably the funnier stand-up. What’s irrefutable, though, is that Coogan is the finest comic actor Britain has produced since Tony Hancock or Peter Sellars. Naunced, perceptive, poignant and conceived with mesmerising attention to details, his best work skewers delusional celebrities, desperate English archetypes, and the flotsam and jetsam of the daily grind. Coogan can be savage, but at heart he is a humanist.
He is also a magnificently gifted impressionist, whose note-perfect piss-takes of various showbiz personalities you will have heard even if you didn’t realise it was him doing the lampooning (among others, he voiced John Major and Roger Moore on Spitting Image). And he’s a film star too, mixing well-financed Hollywood fare with low budget deconstructionist work like the recently released A Cock & Bull Story.
What’s really amazing, though, is how someone this talented can be rendered so utterly insensible by a love for cars. On at least one of the occasions I’ve previously met him, I recommended he seek immediate psychiatric help. He fondles door seals, for heaven’s sake.
On which basis, beckoning him into the global heart of the world’s most famous supercar manufacturer is surely asking for trouble. Especially when the taxi that takes us from our Modena hotel to the Ferrari factory turns out to be a stretched Mercedes W124. We sit in the middle row, obviously, the better to savour the novelty.
‘I love cars that have a certain integrity,’ Coogan purrs obsessively. ‘I mean look at those mouldings…’
Should we apologise for running a shot here of the newest Ferrari peeping through the famous Maranello arch? No. This is the meat and potatoes – or penne arrabiata – of our world, pretty much the entire history of this magazine in redux.
And no wonder. Anyone with petrol in their veins can’t fail to be moved by the sight of a lissom new Italian sports car in the environs of its birthplace. This is where the story starts, in every sense.
Things have definitely changed though, even in the 10 years since I first paid a visit. President di Montzemelo, now the leaders of the Italians equivalent of the CBI and a man of Brasonesque entrepreneurial vision, knows how to squeeze every last drop out of the Ferrari mythology.
A shop across the road sells highly priced goods to people who really should know better (my six-month-old son now has a Ferrari baby-gro). The parmesan isn’t the only cheesy aspect of the local restaurant’s dedication to the cause. And you can now watch a woman waft a hairdrier across a strip of leather destined for a 612’s dashboard as part of your factory tour.
There was a time when an ornery old git with a clipboard would shoo you out onto the Via Abetone into the path of a passing Iveco. But not now.
No, these days Ferrari is furiously 21st century enterprise. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 599. Aristocratic, louche, and unashamedly the creation of the wind tunnel rather than an unfettered stylist, this is exactly how Ferrari’s GT flagship should look in 2006. It’s dramatic, uncompromised, with a sophisticated sensuality that still leaves room for a diffuser whose downforce generating properties outweigh the amount of lift caused by the upper body. So it works, and it looks good.
And never mind the F430 or the Enzo: the 599 has the purest bloodline, the descendant of the 250 MM, 250 GT, 275 GTB, Daytona, and latterly the 575M. It’s royalty.
In startlingly bright sunshine, Coogan and I pore over it, me pontificating about why it really doesn’t matter that it’s not classically beautiful, him wedging his fingers into the door seals. ‘It feels very powerful,’ he says. ‘It definitely has a Daytonaish, 1970s vibe about it. It’s got that playboy millionaire thing going on.’
It’s also big and wide. This is the other thing about collecting a spanking new 200 grand Ferrari from the company’s HQ, the little detail that few ever normally admit to: it’s extremely intimidating. We arrived so late that last night had turned into tomorrow morning by the time we boarded the Fiat Doblo taxi at Bologna airport (complete with Coogan-approved sliding rear windows). Before us lies approximately 800 miles of autostrada, mountain pass and autoroute. It’s now 11am on Thursday morning, and the car is due in Sussex by Friday afternoon.
I’d anticipated some sort of Homeric odyssey, but seem threatened by a Homer Simpson bun-fight. I’m also concerned that Britain’s second funniest comedian might be on the verge of a sense of humour failure. Time to go.
The 599 has magneto rheological dampers. An electronically controlled magnetic field alters the viscosity of the fluid inside the damper, has a maximum response time of 10 milliseconds, and, Ferrari claims, cuts the vibrations to an old-school ‘oleodynamic’ set up.
How the hell do you measure that? Does Ferrari employ pot-hole vibration experts in its suspension department? If so, I’ve found a great one: it’s on the exit slip as you leave the road out of Maranello and join the E35 towards Milan. No computer could simulate the rebound torture this baby summons up. The 599’s active dampers suddenly feel just a bit lazy as the hole swallows us up, but thankfully the costly 20-inch wheel is unmolested. Actually, nasty road craters aside, the first thing that really strikes you about a 599 on the move is how shockingly comfortable it is. It’s very thoughtfully executed. The physicality we already know about. The doors are long and heavy, but getting in is as decorous a process as any Italian exotic has ever managed. The seats – combining single shell backrests with carbonfibre sides – are exceptionally comfortable.
The dash successfully fuses Ferrari’s carbon tough modernity with the more traditional leather finish. A sloping aluminium pod houses the reverse, auto and launch control gearbox buttons. And the instrument graphics are big, clear and cleverly combine digital with analogue. There’s not a huge amount of flair going on in here, and sooner or later Ferrari is clearly going to have to offer a telematics screen rather than a slimline stereo (dated looking without being retro), but it’s extremely well made, functional and elegant.
And fast. Oh boy, is it fast. But not just yet. On the first leg of the journey up to Milan, I prefer to settle into the 599, resist the schoolboy urge to hammer it up to the red line until I’ve tuned into its frequency. It’s an interesting experiment this, because just ebbing and flowing and blending with Italy’s intemperate traffic reveals the 599 to be about as quixotic a car as, I don’t know, a BMW 5-series.
It really is amazingly civil. Ferrari claims all sorts of noise reductions, which isn’t the sort of thing that would normally get the inner child stoked until you find yourself actually doing what the 599 was designed to do: travel long distances quickly and comfortably. Even the gearbox’s auto mode, the dread Achilles’ heel of Ferrari’s automated manual efforts to date, handles the traffic quagmire on Turin’s tangenziale with no fuss whatsoever. There’s a fair bit of the Enzo’s genes in the 599, but absolutely no sign of a supercar temper.
In other words, this is a world class GT. Maranello to Monte Carlo and on to Mayfair, no bother, in the time honoured tradition. And while I would have enjoyed looking at, say, Maria Sharapova rather than Steve Coogan on a journey like this, I doubt she would have been quite as amusing.
Or opinionated. Coogan won the Edinburgh Festival’s Perrier Award in 1993, and as his career went supernova so he swiftly excavated the childhood car obsession, only this time with the funds to indulge. Among others, he has owned a Mazda MX-5 BBR, a Ferrari 328, a Porsche 964, and a Ferrari F355. Currently, his Brighton driveway is home to a BMW X5 and a Porsche 993 Carrera 4S. These are not the choices of a man with a passing interest in cars.
‘I appreciate both Porsche and Ferrari,’ he tells me, as the 599 picks its way through an apocalyptic thunderstorm like a powerboat on a pond, ‘but ultimately I want a car that actually has a little less emotion.
‘For me,’ he continues, suddenly sounding distinctly like his latest creation, the marvellously gnarly Tommy Saxondale, ‘it’s about being properly engineered. There’s something about the 993 which seems to improve with each passing year. There’s a functionality to it and real character, something that’s not contrived.
‘Of course, 911s used to be driven by people who were the apotheosis of Thatcher’s children, and that wasn’t attractive. They seem to have got over that. I really don’t like things that are fashionable one minute, unfashionable the next. It’s the integrity thing.’
There’s a ruminative pause.
‘I might actually swap the X5 for a W124 Merc.’
Another pause. He’s warming up now.
‘Being creative is about not being obvious, about thinking in an original way. It’s about finding idiosyncrasies that are expressive and interesting, whether it’s in comedy, literature or car design. When people who really know understand that the one I drive isn’t obvious at all. I’d far rather spend new Audi TT money on an old 911.’
An 800-mile drive, it soon transpires, is the perfect opportunity to formulate a plan for that you might call a new age car enthusiasm. Coogan has a thesis already worked out, and if you caught episode two of Saxondale – in which he satirised a rather self-regarding fictional motoring journalist called Jerome Wilson – you’ll know where he’s coming from.
Does he love cars almost against his better judgement? It seems so. Surely piloting a Ferrari 599 through the Mont Blanc tunnel – God it sounds good, a bypass valve-assisted exhaust helping unleash a genuine 12-cylinder symphony, as Robbie Williams once sang – is not the place for such heretical thoughts?
‘I am slightly embarrassed to be a car enthusiast,’ he concedes more than a little sheepishly. ‘Obviously I like fast cars but I try to recycle my rubbish, and the two things aren’t incompatible. You can be intelligent and have a sense of humour and still be fascinated by cars and engineering. Unfortunately, cars are destineded to be a diversionary activity. This idea that the motorist is an oppressed minority I find utterly laughable. The negativity that’s bestowed on the motoring lobby is brought on by themselves because they adopt a siege mentality, and refuse to engage intelligently with the issues.’
He’s sounding genuinely riled now.
‘I love car magazines, but so many journalists are just Clarkson mini-mes trotting out the same tried, reactionary, right-wing claptrap. There’s no proper debate or dialogue. Public transport, congestion charge, speed cameras – they’re all rubbish apparently.
‘Don’t misunderstand me, Jeremy is a friend and he’s very funny. In that episode of Saxondale I wanted to have a dig at the car industry in general. At first Tommy is swept up in [Jerome’s] argument, and it’s two people reinforcing each other’s argument. Then he realises that the guy is actually a bit of an idiot. Look, it’s about acknowledging that there’s a dichotomy here. This Ferrari is a truly wonderful car but it’s also … meaningless. I can genuinely understand why some people would find it objectionable. But to me, it also happens to typify a glorious, romantic ideal.
‘Having said that, the only people who actually still cross continents in a car are motoring journalists. Not even car enthusiasts cross freaking continents: they get a plane and hire something at the other end.’
We’ve just crossed (part of a) continent in a car. To be honest, it’s been great. As Coogan grapples with his conscience, he admits it’s been special. Less practical but also substantially less polluting than an Easyjet flight. But let’s not go there. Whatever Faustian pact we’ve signed, there’s no effective distraction that a Ferrari V12 in full operatic flow. Not that the face he pulls as I wind the 599’s Enzo-derived powerplant up and watch the speedo arc round to 190mph is a picture of gratitude in the classic sense. When he does speak again, it’s in slightly strangled Partridgese.
Three months ago CAR decided that this was the world’s most desirable car, and deep into our journey I’m pretty sure it is. It just does everything, and does it with remarkable subtlety given its outputs, price and image. It’s devastatingly seductive. It’s very well made. It has integrity.
It is also fast. Really, surreally fast. The sort of fast that focuses the mind intensely, fillets your brain of all extraneous thoughts, and simultaneously floods your senses. Frankly, it’s difficult to see how much more highly evolved a front-engined sports car could possibly get. Then again…
The steering, brakes and gearbox are imperfect, if only slightly. The transmission’s 100 millisecond shift time eclipse even the Enzo’s, but a degree of finesse is still required to coax the best out of it. Okay, so it’s dealing with 612bhp and 448lb ft of torque, but the Bugatti Veyron’s seven-speed dual-shift system copes with getting on for double those numbers with total conviction. Ferrari’s DSG will be along soon.
The carbon ceramic brakes are fabulous (and a fabulously pricey 14 grand option), but only once you’ve established that not much happens in the pedal’s first inch of travel. This is the so-called sneeze factor. The steering is highly effective, too, but perhaps just a little too effective at masking the 599’s muscular responses. It’s always unfailingly accurate, but I’d prefer more feel.
As in the car, so with life. Like Hancock and Sellers, Coogan is a performer bless with a remarkable touch, real feeling. There’s darkness, but genuine humility too. And a searing intelligence.
‘The tragedy is that Tommy Saxondale is talking to no-one. He’s a little man shouting into the wind. There’s something stoic, tragic and vulnerable about that which is why I wanted to do it. It’s not fashionable in these postmodern times to say, ‘I really care about this’. What you’re meant to say is that it’s all a load of crap and let’s go have a beer. Which is very tempting. But eventually you have to have the guts to say what you really think.’
Steve Coogan. He’s a V12 comedian in a four-pot world.
