Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

And so we arrive, naturally, at the Volvo 340 DL. As we know, this was a ghastly car. Made by people in Holland who thought Jesus was coming, it was powered by rubber bands, fitted with Mr Universe steering and styled during a game of consequences.

However, it was perceived to be strong and safe, so it attracted all the people who were not very good at driving and thought they may crash. This was unbelievably useful for the rest of us. If you saw a Volvo 340 DL coming the other way, you knew to be on your guard.

Eventually, however, Volvo decided to stop making bad cars for useless drivers, so the incompetent and weak decided en masse to switch to Rover. And again, this was good: see a 45 in the left lane, indicating left, and you knew not to assume it was actually going to turn left.

But then Rover went west and the bad drivers were suddenly hard to spot. Some were in Hyundais and Kias. Some were in Volkswagen Golfs. It was a dangerous period, but luckily Peugeot rode to the rescue. For many years this French company had made excellent cars but one day it decided to make a lot of very cheap rubbish for people with hearing aids, hats and a tendency to hang something from the rear-view mirror.

The other day I saw a Peugeot upside down at the entrance to the Hanger Lane underpass in west London. It is physically impossible to roll a car here, on what is a dead-straight piece of road. But Mr Pug Driver had managed it. And I recently saw another, balanced in pretty much the same place on the Armco.

Last week I came as close as I’ve been for years to having a head-on with a 308 that was on completely the wrong side of the road. It is uncanny this: Peugeots are invariably driven by someone who finds every single motoring event a complete surprise. ‘Oh my God, look. Those lights have just gone RED!’ ‘Holy cow. There’s another CAR!’

If I were running the police force, I would ask my officers to pull over all Peugeot drivers just to make sure they aren’t driving under the influence of Vera Lynn. Because they’re sure as hell driving under the influence of something.

To find out what it might be, I’ve just spent a week with a 208, or to be specific, the mid-range 1.2-litre VTi Allure. It’s a good-looking little thing and at £13,495 it’s well priced, too, especially given the amount of equipment provided as standard.

The only slight oddness is the steering wheel. It’s the size of a shirt button and it’s located very low down. So low that in the event of a crash, your testes would get such a thump from the airbag you’d wish you had died.

There were many nice things, though. For a 1.2 the engine delivers a surprising lump of punch. At one stage I was doing 70 mph, and that’s faster than a Peugeot has travelled for twenty years. I also liked the central command system that is used to operate everything.

The 208 is actually smaller on the outside than the car it replaces – the dreadful 207 – but inside, it’s bigger. So big, in fact, that there was space in the back, with the rear seats folded, for three dogs, one of which was larger than a diplodocus. Other things? Well, it was quiet and comfortable and the visibility was good.

All the time, though, I had a nagging doubt. On the face of it all was well, but every time I started the engine there was a beat before the electric power steering woke up. It was only a moment, but it told me that behind the flashing lights and the nice design touches, the engineering wasn’t quite as thorough as you might have hoped.

There’s more evidence too. It’s never an annoying car but it’s not what you’d call delightful, either. You don’t get the little shiver that you sometimes experience in a Fiat, or even a Volkswagen. This, then, to a car enthusiast is what those music centres were to me back in 1981. An attractive package with many features that is fine for playing Dire Straits as you drive to the shops. But not much else.

It is, therefore, a car for people who are not that interested in cars. And that explains everything. Because if you are not interested in something, you will be no good at it.

Perhaps that’s why Peugeot says in its advertisements that the 208 is a car that lets your body drive. It does, leaving your mind free to think about stuff that matters to you: the Blitz and how it used to be all trees around here.

I suppose, however, we can draw an interesting conclusion. If you – as a good driver – do buy a 208, you will find that all the traffic parts as you motor along. They will assume you are about to crash into something.

It might, therefore, be a faster and safer way of moving around than almost anything else on the road.

A man was apprehended by the constabulary recently for turning around to admire a girl on the pavement. He’d seen her bottom as he drove by, and officers spotted him looking through his rear window to see if the front was as good as the back.

I realize, of course, that when we are behind the wheel we are expected to become robots, immune to the ringing of a telephone, the crying of children in the back and the stupidity of other motorists. We may not talk, listen to the radio, eat a sandwich or become irritated. And all of this is ridiculous. But now we discover we may not drive while under the influence of a scrotum, and that’s worse.

I try not to look at pretty girls on bicycles because it is probably annoying to have half the population looking up your skirt and praying for a gust of wind. But it is not possible. I have just about trained my head to stay still but my eyes are controlled by testosterone, and as often as not I don’t see the lights turn green because they’ve swung around so far I’m actually looking at my own frontal lobes.

I’m also distracted by roadside advertisements, new shops, the amusing driving position of shorter motorists, interesting cloud formations, work matters, idiotic signs that have no meaning, a constant fear that one of the wheels is about to fall off, the mind-numbing noise of high-power motorcycles – pretty much everything. Except other cars.

I don’t turn around when I see a Lamborghini or a Ferrari going the other way, in the same way that people who work at the chocolate factory don’t stand and salivate at the petrol station’s confectionery counter.

That said, I can never resist a sneaky double take when I am presented with a Jaguar XK. Designed by the same man who gave us the Aston Martin DB9, and engineered by Jag when it and Aston were part of the same company, it’s always been a thinking man’s Bondmobile. No, really. It was nearly as quick off the mark and only half the price.

What’s more, it managed to combine the rakish good looks of the Aston with more aggression. It managed therefore to be pretty and fighty at the same time. It’s such a head-turner, in fact, that whenever I see one I become consumed by one of life’s great mysteries: ‘Why don’t I have one?’

To find out, again, I’ve just spent a week with the newest, latest version, the super-hot, super-aggressive XKR-S convertible. And straight away I could see many problems.

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is an old car now. The dials look as though they’ve been lifted from a thirty-year-old Peugeot, the back seats are as useful as having no seats at all, the touchscreen command system, which operates the radio and climate control, is as counterintuitive as an old twist-key sardine tin, and while an iPod connection is supplied, it won’t play tunes from your iPhone – or at least it wouldn’t for me. ‘What!?’ it says, when you try. ‘Are you suggesting you can play music on your telephone? Don’t be stupid.’