Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

The only solution is to take away their special lanes and their priorities. It’s to make them understand that they may use the roads but only if they’re jolly careful, because roads have always been for ‘the people’. And the vast majority of people have cars.

Mind you, on Kensington High Street last week it didn’t feel that way. I thought at one point I’d become involved in a west London étape of the Tour de France. It was 7 p.m. and there were hundreds and hundreds of people with wizened bottoms and beards and idiotic hats and luminous clothing, cycling through red lights at way beyond the speed limit.

As they passed, many shouted abuse at me for daring to be there, stationary at a red light or cruising along at a mere 25 mph. Some banged on my doors. Some bared their teeth. It was awful and I considered carefully the idea of running one of them down. Maybe two.

Mind you, some of their rage may have had something to do with the fact that I was driving a Jeep Wrangler, which is a big American off-roader. They obviously hated it very much and that’s why I decided to leave them alone. Because I did too.

As we know, Jeep began by making rugged military 4x4s in 1941. General Dwight D. Eisenhower said the second world war could not have been won without the company’s first effort. It was a simple thing, too, which is why many claim Jeep stands for ‘just enough essential parts’.

Over the years, that original morphed gradually into the Wrangler. This was often converted by its fanbase into a high-riding, doorless, roofless monster with a V8 under the bonnet. It was usually to be found cruising around in Key West in Florida with a giant purple eagle on the bonnet. But, crucially, it still worked well off road. Indeed, one of the most enjoyable drives I’ve ever had in any car was in a Wrangler, going up the craggy Rubicon trail over the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Its heart may have been in San Francisco, but its soul was still in the back country.

Unfortunately Jeep decided to start selling its Wrangler in other countries – countries in which people do not talk loudly around the swimming pool and giant purple eagles are considered poor form. In Britain, for example, we have the Land Rover. And Germany has the Mercedes G-wagen. So Jeep has decided its Wrangler should become more restrained. More practical. More European. And it hasn’t worked at all. First, it is extremely ugly. And, second, you can’t see out of it. The blind spots are so big, bicycles are invisible. So are buses. So is the Albert Hall.

There’s more. The only way Jeep has been able to fit in rear doors and seats is by shunting the front seat so far forwards that you can – and must, in fact – operate all the controls with your face. To make matters worse, the satnav screen is so bright that once the sun has set, it’s as if you’re driving into the beam of an alien spaceship’s searchlight.

Of course, there are many levers and switches that mean it still works off road, but I’m afraid that on the road it’s not good at all. The 2.8-litre diesel engine feels as though it was designed by people who had no real concept of how such a thing might work. We have a name for these people: Americans.

Then there’s the suspension. It is very soft. So soft, in fact, that you can drive over even the most alarming hump at whatever speed takes your fancy and you won’t notice it at all. On the downside, it feels as if you may fall out on every bend. And the steering is woeful. And, strangely, the ride on the motorway is unbelievably fidgety.

Then again, a Land Rover Defender is pretty hopeless on the road as well. But that doesn’t pretend to be a luxury tool, whereas the Wrangler I tested does. It has roof panels that lift out – if you have a PhD in engineering – and cruise control and lots of gizmos. It’s like a diamanté wellington. A gold-plated cowpat. A village idiot at the Savoy.

There’s a sign picked out on the dash that says, ‘Since 1941’. What it should say is ‘Mechanically unchanged since 1941’.

It’s a shame. I used to like the old Wrangler. I know it was a bit, ahem, Venice Beach, and that if it were a man, it would shave its scrotum and enjoy going to the gym. But it was a good and interesting take on the 4x4 theme.

The new version has lost all that. It’s trying to be a Land Rover for those who also want a few creature comforts. And for £28,000 it’s not as if you’re short of alternatives. All of which are considerably better. Except cycling, of course, or using the bus.

We see many Russians in the big, wide world these days and they appear to be extremely well off. They always have enormous watches, huge cars and embroidered jeans. Many also have football clubs.

So you would imagine that if you were running an airline, you would try to impress these newly moneyed people by lavishing your Moscow service with your latest, newest, shiniest aircraft. Weirdly, British Airways has chosen to do the exact opposite.

In my experience, BA puts its best aeroplanes on the transatlantic routes, and then, when the fittings and fixtures are a bit tired, the aircraft are relieved of their JFK duties and are used to ferry holidaymakers to the Caribbean. When they are too decrepit even for that, they take people to and from Uganda, and I thought that afterwards they were scrapped – or sold to Angola. But no.

It seems they are then given to the fire service, which uses them to train crews on the art of passenger evacuation, and then to the SAS, who run about in the burnt carcasses, shooting at imaginary terrorists. After that, they are used on the Moscow route.

I recently flew with BA to Russia, and to give you an idea of how old the plane was, I will tell you the on-board entertainment system used VHS tapes. And to make the quality even less impressive, my television screen was less than 2 inches across. And it was located on the bulkhead, several feet in front of my face. Also, it was broken. So was the lavatory seat.

I was going to write a letter to the chairman of BA, explaining that he’s got it all the wrong way round. Using your best aircraft to compete with America’s airlines – which are exclusively staffed by fat, bossy women and serve rubbish food – is like Chelsea fielding their best team to take on Doncaster Rovers.

I was going to point out to him – because plainly he doesn’t know – that the Berlin Wall has gone, and that the Russians are no longer queuing for six years to buy a beetroot and then being shot for saying it’s a bit warty.

I was also going to invite him to take a look around Gum, the department store in Red Square. There was a time when people would come from thousands of miles away because it had just taken delivery of some pencils. Now it makes the Westfield shopping centres in London look like an Ethiopian’s larder. The smallest watch on display is bigger than the TV screen I hadn’t been able to watch on my flight, and the underwear costs more than the ticket.

It’s not just materialism, either. In Russia people are now free to say absolutely anything that comes into their heads. Talk as Russians do in Britain and you’d be hauled over the coals for racism and branded a bigot. You want to suggest the legal age of consent should be lowered to twelve? Go right ahead. People won’t call you a paedo; they’ll be interested to hear why you think that way. They went seventy years without being able to discuss anything. Now they want to discuss everything.

Of course, you are not able to write too disparagingly about Vladimir Putin, unless you want some radioactivity with your bacon and egg, but you can sure as hell say what you like – to whoever you’re with. I found it fantastically liberating.