Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Undaunted, Mercedes called the new car the SLK 55 AMG and sent it out into the world with a simple message. ‘Now look. We’ve given you an enormous penis. Go and use it.’

It certainly wooed me, because I bought one. Of course, my colleagues thought I’d taken leave of my senses and laughed openly in my face. So did all the nation’s van drivers, and in every petrol station people would point and suggest loudly that my salon must be doing well. The codpiece front and the baritone rear fooled nobody.

But I didn’t care because I like small cars. I like convertibles. And I like big engines. And the SLK was the only car on the market that met all three of those requirements – and a few more besides. It had an automatic gearbox and, though it was fast and hard and brutal, it came with all the usual Mercedes refinements including a DVD player, a TV, electric seats, cruise control and so on. It was a doddle in town, brilliant on a sunny day, easy to park, as fast as a comet, good-looking, exciting, noisy and enormous fun. Who cared that it enjoyed musicals and went to bed at night in its sister’s knickers? I even ordered mine in black.

Mercedes, though, was still not satisfied. It knew that when it wasn’t looking, its scaffolder was endlessly watching the shower scene from Top Gun , so with its replacement the company has gone mental. The car has the haunches of a hyena, the snout of a racer, flaps, ducts and claws. It’s a low-profile, full-fat, high-octane he-man. I’m surprised the advertising slogan isn’t ‘Are you a woman? Well, you can eff off.’

Let’s start with the engine. In essence, it’s the same 5.5-litre unit that you get in other, bigger AMG cars, only without the turbocharging. Do not think, however, that the lack of forced induction means you will be bouncing up and down in your seat when leaving the lights to try to conjure up some extra wallop.

Because of new air-intake ducting, new cylinder heads and a modified valve drive, you are presented with 416 brake horsepower. That is about 60 more than you were given in the old SLK 55, and in a car this size it means the performance is very nearly insane.

However, because the new engine is fitted with a feature that shuts down either two or four of the cylinders when they’re not needed, it produces only 195 carbon dioxides and should be good for more than 33 mpg. The Lord giveth and then the Lord giveth even more.

Handling? Well, now, let’s be clear on this: if you want finesse and delicacy, buy a BMW. In a straight line, an AMG car is an easy match for anything made by BMW’s M – or motor sport – division. But through the corners the Mercedes will be left far behind. This is not a criticism. Because although the Merc may not be able to tame the laws of physics quite as well as an M car, it will put a much bigger smile on your face. BMWs reward your skill. Fast Mercs make you laugh.

And so it goes with the SLK. Mercedes may have fiddled with the camber and perforated the brake discs. The little convertible may have all the racing paraphernalia, but it’s still a car you have to wrestle if you want to get the most from it. It’s a car that’s happiest when it’s a little bit sideways.

Inside, however, there’s no evidence of this at all. The gearbox is a proper auto. The radio is digital. The headrests are fitted with ducts that feed warm air to your neck. The car I drove was even equipped with a device that suggested when I might like a cup of coffee.

However, while there’s one improvement over the old model – the can-of-pop-holders are no longer located in front of the heater vents – there is one step backwards. If you push the seat all the way back, the leather rubs against the rear bulkhead and squeaks every time you go over a bump. It’s very annoying.

It sounds, then, as if this new car is much the same as the old one, albeit a bit faster and quite a lot more economical. But I’m afraid that’s not strictly accurate. Because where’s the noise? The old car crackled when you started it, roared when it was moving and ticked when it wasn’t. And without this soundtrack the excitement has gone. It means you never feel inclined to put your foot down. I spent my week just pottering about. At one point I found myself doing 60 mph on the motorway. On the Burford road in Oxfordshire the other night I was overtaken by a Fiat 500.

Really, it should come with a cattle prod and a device that tells the driver to pull over and get some bloody Red Bull down his neck. Sometimes I’d try to go a bit faster, but there seemed to be little reward, and as soon as I stopped concentrating I went back into Peugeot mode.

So we’re left with a big question. At £54,965 the new SLK 55 costs less than I was expecting. But why pay this much for a car that doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck? If you want a pottering-about, top-down cruiser, why not buy one of the much cheaper, smaller-engined versions?

Because they’re for girls? OK, then, why not buy a BMW Z4? This is a much underrated car. At less than £40,000 for a twin-turbo 3-litre, it has the same hard folding roof as the Mercedes but is better looking and much less of a handful. Oh, and there’s one more thing. It’s the only car in the world that was designed by women. I like it very much.

It is extraordinary how often a room full of well-qualified adults can discuss a subject in their chosen field and arrive at a conclusion that’s completely muddle-headed and stupid.

We see this a lot in politics. Only recently an MP called Keith Vaz went on television to say the immigration desks at Heathrow needed to be ‘personed up’. I actually went back and watched the moment again. But there was no mistaking it. This man – an MP with a first-class degree from Cambridge – had obviously been to a meeting where other sentient beings had convinced him to use words that no one else understands.

Then there was the war in Iraq. Wise, clear-thinking people had access to all the information that the satellites could provide. And yet still they made a decision that was idiotic and wrong.

A few years ago Coca-Cola did the same thing, albeit with less important ramifications, when it decided to make Coke taste like a used swab. BA did it with its tailfins. Gerald Ratner described a product he sold as ‘total crap’, Paul McCartney recorded ‘Ebony and Ivory’. Philips pioneered the laserdisc. Clive Sinclair decided to put his all into an electric slipper. John Prescott invented the M4 bus lane. The San Francisco Chronicle turned down the syndication of the Watergate story, saying it would only interest people on the east coast. And Top Gear made a film about an art gallery in Middlesbrough.

I’m to blame. I brought it up in a meeting and instead of getting insects to lay eggs in my hair, the production team nodded sagely. We’d take over an art gallery, fill it with automotive-based art and prove that cars bring in bigger crowds than unmade beds and pickled sharks. Somehow, though, it didn’t occur to any of us that this would be a very long and boring film until after it appeared on the show. ‘That was very long and boring,’ we all said afterwards.

Of course, the motoring world is rammed with more mistakes than almost any other industry. Someone at Pontiac looked at the design for the Aztek and said, ‘Mmm. Yes. Excellent.’ And there were similar noises in the Ford boardroom when the stylists mistakenly unveiled their joke plans for what became the Scorpio.

Daimler really thought it could compete with the Rolls-Royce Phantom by putting some cherry wood in a Mercedes S-class and calling it a Maybach. Toyota launched a car called the MR2 without noticing that when said in French – ‘MR deux’ – it translates as ‘shit’, and Audi decided that it could improve on the airbag by developing a system called ‘procon-ten’, which used a fantastically complicated network of cables to pull the steering wheel forward in any frontal impact.