Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

The only ‘lifestyle’ ads that match the car they’re promoting come from Honda. ‘Isn’t it nice when things just work?’ The message is simple. We don’t do fuss. We don’t do flimflam. We are sensible. And that’s what Hondas are. Sensible.

Because they are so sensible, my shoulders sagged quite a bit when I walked out of the house last Monday morning to find that a brown Accord with a diesel engine was sitting in the drive. I had many miles to cover that week and, frankly, I didn’t fancy doing any of them in the motoring equivalent of wholemeal bread. So I loaded up the boot of my Mercedes and took that instead.

Sadly, the following Monday, the Accord was still there and I was overcome with guilt. So, with a heavy heart, I climbed inside, fired up the motor, pointed its sensible, car-shaped nose at the capital and pressed the accelerator.

What happened next was alarming. We are conditioned to expect a certain level of response from a diesel engine. It’s the response you get from a fat man in a vest who’s spent the afternoon sitting in a deckchair. Not this diesel engine, though…

Honda – the last mainstream car maker to get into diesel engines – brands this top-of-the-range paraffin stove the Type S, and that means the 2.2-litre turbocharged motor now develops 178 horsepower. That’s 30 more than you get from the standard car and, boy, oh boy, do you feel it. This car may be brown and as interesting to look at as the periodic table, but it goes like a scalded cock.

Of course, you may imagine that by upping the power, Honda has sacrificed fuel economy. And you’d be right. It has: 1.9 mpg of it. But you should still be able to get more than 50 mpg, and that, thanks to a massive fuel tank, means you need visit the filling station only once every 650 miles. Let me just say that again. Once every 650 miles. That, all on its own, is a good enough reason for buying this car. But there’s more.

The Type S package means an ‘aero’ body kit – which I couldn’t spot – bigger wheels, low-profile tyres and sports suspension. You would imagine, therefore, that you were in for a bone-shaking ride. But you’re not.

At the BBC’s underground car park in White City there are speed bumps of such severity that in most cars I weave about through the bays rather than drive over them. Even at 1 mph they hurt. But with the Accord they weren’t there. I didn’t feel them at all. It was as if I was trying to park a hovercraft.

So, it’s fast, economical, comfortable… and almost unbelievably well made. Slam the door on a Subaru Legacy – another well-made car – and it makes the sound of a shot pheasant hitting the ground on a frosty morning. Slam the door on the Honda Accord and it makes the sound of a pheasant coming in to land… after you’ve missed it. It’s almost silent.

There’s a similar sensation of quality on the inside. This is a car that doesn’t feel assembled. It feels as though it’s been hewn from one solid block of steel. It’s a Barbour jacket. It’s a Scottish mountain. Push a button in a Honda and it feels as if you could push it a billion times and it would still be working. It’s the exact opposite, then, of an iPhone.

Right. Now it’s time to talk about the drawbacks. Well, while this car is available as an estate, it is not available with an automatic gearbox. And that’s odd. Also, it comes with many electronic features that are understandable to only the sort of person that would switch from vodka to sherry more readily than they’d switch to a Honda Accord.

I suppose I ought to point out as well that while the engine delivers all that you could ask, it is not quite as refined as the diesel engine you get in a BMW. And that’s it.

The diesel Accord Type S is well priced, considering the amount of equipment it comes with as standard, it’s pretty spacious, it’s lovely to drive and – I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this already – you only need take it to the pumps every 650 miles.

Yes, it’s boring to look at, but even that can have its advantages. It’ll never be vandalized, and I think I’m right in saying that not once in all of human history has an Accord driver been stopped randomly by the police. That’s because they know that anyone who bought a car as sensible as this will have the correct paperwork, no alcohol in their bloodstream and no sub-machine gun in the boot.

If it were available with an automatic gearbox, I’d be tempted to give it five stars. But it isn’t, so, reluctantly, I won’t.

Instead I’ll sum it up by saying that it’s nice to find something that just works.

It emerged recently that the least reliable car you can buy is a Range Rover. An extensive study found that on 02-registered cars, there was a 56 per cent chance of a fault developing within a year. My own findings suggest that brand-new models have a battery issue that could put you on the bus in weeks.

To make matters worse, the company’s designers seem to be hell-bent on ruining the quiet, restrained, tasteful looks with more and more chintz. The front end now looks like a branch of Ratners, and soon, you get the impression they will fit fake Roman pillars on either side of the driver’s door. I suspect they won’t be fully happy, though, until the whole car is made from onyx.

I don’t doubt for a moment that it is all very lovely if you live in Alderley Edge, but in the rest of the country, where showing-off is considered poor form, it’s all just too vulgar and horrid for words. Small wonder, then, that we are starting to see a re-emergence on the streets of the Mercedes G-wagen.

It’s been on sale in Britain before but now it’s back in two versions. Both are long wheelbase but one is from AMG and therefore has a supercharged V8, and the other is the one I’ve been driving for the past week, the G 350 Bluetec diesel.

It is extremely handsome. Restrained. Dignified. And cool in a menacing sort of way. If it were a gun, it would be an AK-47. It is, then, the complete opposite of the modern-day Range Rover, which is like a gangsta’s diamond-encrusted Colt. Small wonder that in Notting Hill many media types even stopped pedalling for a moment to give the big beast an appreciative nod. People like looking at this car. It feels, therefore, worth the £81,700 asking price. Driving it, however, is a rather different story.

You may remember that recently on Top Gear I brought news of a half-million-pound E-type Jaguar. Built by a company in East Sussex called Eagle, it was the most beautiful man-made thing I’d ever seen. Better than the Humber Bridge. Better than the Riva Aquarama, even.

However, it was nothing like a modern car to drive. Yes, many of the components were brand new, but you couldn’t get away from the fact that the basic architecture came from a time when people would travel miles to gawp at a top-loading washing machine.

Then there was the Jensen Interceptor that I reviewed earlier. The idea was brilliant. You had the beautiful Italian styling from the days of the loon pant and the tie-dye T-shirt, but you got a modern engine, modern brakes and modern suspension. Sadly, you did not get antilock braking or airbags or a satnav system. Or wipers that could wipe the windscreen.

I can see why you would be interested in buying an updated Jensen or an Eagle E-type. They are approximately 18,000 times more interesting than the modern-day equivalents from Jaguar or Aston or Mercedes-Benz. But for every point you score on the kudosometer, you will lose one when you run over a manhole cover. Or into a tree.

The G-wagen is much the same. It was originally designed for the German army in the 1970s, which means that, underneath, it is made from 1970s technology. This means that on roads you know to be perfectly smooth it will pitch and writhe about like one of those bucking broncos you can now rent for children’s parties.