Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Another notable thing in Australia is a fanatical approach to health and safety. There are more speed cameras than people, and if you wish to go snorkelling you must dress up in a giant nylon all-in-one. This means no part of your skin, including hands, feet and face, is in contact with the water, and so you cannot get stung by a box jellyfish.

In some ways it is a wise precaution. But I’m sorry – splashing about in an acrylic submarine rather spoils the point of snorkelling. And it’s not as if the box jellyfish is unique to Oz. The little critters are everywhere, and no other nation makes you get into a condom just in case.

It gets worse. After my snorkelling expedition, I tried to rent a jet ski. But a state law meant that I had to sit down, in the blazing sunshine, and take a written exam. What’s to learn? There’s a throttle and that’s it. My daughter was riding a jet ski at the age of five. An idiot could do it. I pointed all this out to the blond surfer dude who was running the course, but it was as if he’d been programmed: safety is everything.

Not on a jet ski, it isn’t. Fun is everything. Whizzing about and trying to splash your mates is everything. Getting knocked off by a big wave is everything. If you want to be safe on a jet ski, get off it.

So there you are, in a country where they drive on the same side of the road as us, speak the same language and have the same head of state. And the same summer weather, if my recent trip is anything to go by. But it’s not the same at all.

And it especially isn’t the same when you look at cars. In every other country in the world people may like the brand of car they drive, but not so much that they would punch someone in the face for driving something different.

To the average Aussie there are two brands. Ford and Holden. And even if you are a solicitor and you drive an Audi, you are instinctively in one of these two groups. I was going to say it’s like the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, but it isn’t. It’s more ingrained than that.

There is such fanaticism, in fact, and loyalty, that both Ford and General Motors make cars specifically for the Australian market. We’re talking about a country of just 22 million people – most of whom are in Earls Court. That would be like making a car specifically for Romania. It wouldn’t happen.

That said, it is not expensive to engineer a car for the Australian market. Certainly, you don’t have to employ a stylist. The current crop of Holdens aren’t too bad, in a meaty, knuckle-dragging sort of way, but the Fords… Oh dear. And it was always thus, even back in the days of Mad Max and his Interceptor.

I tried the new Ford Falcon FPV Boss 335 GT when I was over there and it struck me that someone had spent a few quid on the engine and then nothing at all on anything else. I’m told this is how it should be when you are upside down. Which you will be if you try to make it go round a corner.

The old Falcon V8 was a bit of a problem child because the turbocharged V6 model was faster and nice to drive. So Ford has teamed up with Prodrive – the famous Aussie motor racing house in Oxfordshire – to create the new one.

It was a big ask because the base engine comes from a Mustang and it has asthma. To try to insert a bit of ephedrine, it is now fitted with a supercharger and an intercooler, which means you get lots of grunt. So much that every time you set off you ‘lay a couple of darkies’. People cheer when you leave a skid mark like this in Australia.

So it’s quite gruntsome in a straight line, but it is too big, too soft and too heavy to be remotely good at anything else. And inside, you get the impression everything is made from Cellophane. My snorkelling suit felt more robust.

By rights the FPV should not exist. It’s pointless. But then so is the koala, and we’d all be a bit sad if we woke up one morning to find that the last button-nosed little stoner had fallen out of his tree.

It’s the coolest name ever given to a car. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight. I’ll be in the Interceptor.’ Imagine being able to say that. Or even: ‘Darling. About tonight. Shall we take the Interceptor?’ It sends a shiver down your spine. Maserati is a good name. Thunderbird is even better. But Interceptor? That’s the best of them all.

Of course, it wouldn’t be quite so good if the name were writing cheques the body of the car couldn’t cash. You can’t be called Clint Thrust if you have a chest like a teaspoon and limbs from the canvas of Laurence Lowry.

Happily, the Interceptor looked magnificent. It was big, with a body styled by Carrozzeria Touring of Italy that included a thrusting bonnet, an unusual wraparound back window and gills. It was distinguished. It was fantastic. It was one of the best-looking cars ever made.

Sadly, I never drove one of the originals and it’s hard to find out what they were like since the only person I know who had one was Eric Morecambe and, unfortunately, he’s no longer with us. From what I can gather, though, the driving experience was ‘absolutely awful’.

The engine was a Chrysler 6.2 V8, which turned money into noise but produced very little by way of power in the process. Which was probably a good thing since the enormous live rear axle wasn’t really attached to the car in a way you’d call finished. And to make matters worse, Jensen would simply pop down to the local supplier whenever it needed a steering rack and come back with whatever was on the shelves. Some Jensens, by all accounts, were accidently sold to customers with steering designed for the Triumph Stag.

As a result of all this, the Interceptor sits in the bargain basement bin of the nation’s classic car market. While you are now expected to pay hundreds of thousands for an Aston DB5 or an E-type Jag, a decent Interceptor can be yours for around £5,000.

You may think it would be worth it, just so you could offer to take people out in your Interceptor. But I should imagine you’ll get there two days after you set off, covered in soot. Reliability wasn’t a Jensen strong point and things won’t have improved with time. So that’s that, then. Memory Lane this morning has turned out to be a dead end.

Except it hasn’t, because the car we’re talking about isn’t really a Jensen Interceptor. It started out in life that way, but then an Oxfordshire-based company called Jensen International Automotive came along and gave it the full bikini wax and Botox treatment. The car you see is an Interceptor S and it’s absolutely brilliant.

First, the original American engine has been thrown away and replaced with another one. It’s the rather good all-aluminium 6.2-litre V8 from a Corvette. You get a Corvette gearbox as well, but from there backwards, things get a bit more complicated. The live rear axle, the leaf springs and all the rest of the Roman technology is replaced with a fully independent setup, with some bits coming from the old Jaguar XJS – the limited-slip diff, for example – and some from the new company.

The front AP Racing brakes have six-pot callipers with ventilated and grooved discs. The tyres are low profile. The dampers are adjustable. And… are you dribbling yet?

I was. So I climbed inside and it all got better and better. It’s a faithful reproduction of the Jensen original with white-on-black Smiths-style dials, quilted seats and, best of all, a push-button radio that offers you the choice of 5 Live with a slight crackle. Or just the crackle. There is, however, a discreet iPod connection in the glove box.

It’s extraordinary when you sit in a car from this period how light and airy the interior feels. Because the pillars are there simply to support the roof, rather than to absorb the impact of hitting a bridge, they are thin and spidery. It feels like you are sitting in a glass bubble, and that makes you feel like you’re on show. Which, if you are driving an Interceptor, is exactly where you want to be.