Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Toyota, meanwhile, called the first car it tried to sell in America the Toyolet. Until the importers suggested that Toyopet might be a bit better. And then we had the Mitsubishi Starion. Which was supposed to have been the Stallion but there was a mix-up caused by the Japanese problem with the letter ‘l’.

There have been some good names, though. The best by a mile – and I won’t take any argument on this – is the Interceptor. The Pantera was pretty good as well but, really, for consistently good names you need to look to America, which has given us the Thunderbird and the Mustang, the Cougar and the Barracuda.

It’s a confidence thing, I guess, the big, toothy ability to name an awful, slow car after a wild, ferocious animal: it’s like calling your son Hercules, even if you have an inkling he’ll grow up to be a six-stone weed with asthma and pipe cleaners for arms.

All of this brings me on to the new baby Vauxhall. The company has called it the Adam, which was the Christian name of the founder of Vauxhall’s sister brand Opel, but the car maker says that’s not why it chose the name. It says it chose Adam for the reason that UKTV changed the name of its G2 channel to Dave. Because it’s a nice name. I think I agree.

The Adam is supposed to take Vauxhall into territory currently occupied by the Fiat 500 and the Mini. It’s supposed to be a trendy car for young urbanites. But there’s a small problem with that. The Fiat and the Mini hark back to cars people remember fondly, but what does the Adam hark back to? The Chevette? The Viva?

‘The Prince Henry,’ said a spokesman for General Motors, Vauxhall’s owner. Well, it’s true. The Prince Henry was indeed very special – the first performance car – but if you can remember that, I suspect you’re not really in the market for a small car. Or indeed any car. Not since your final road journey in that hearse.

No. This new car cannot rely on people wanting to recapture a flavour of the Fifties and Sixties. It’s going to have to stand up on its own four wheels. So does it?

There are three trim levels: Jam, Glam and Slam. But each is available with a bewildering array of options. There are, and I’m not making this up, billions and billions of permutations. And don’t worry if you make a mistake and order ‘Men in Brown’ door mirrors – that’s what they’re called – because you can have them changed for the ‘White My Fire’ option in a jiffy.

In fact, when you become bored with the look of the interior you’ve selected, you can change it next month or next year for something completely different, for £70.

The upshot is that you cannot hate the way the Adam looks because you can make it look however you want. You can’t really hate it as a town car either. There is space in the back for two people, provided their lower legs are no more than 3 inches thick, and there is a boot that’s just about big enough for a midweek shop.

Visibility is good, the clutch is light, the steering is nice and the ride comfort is exceptional. Take away all the connotations, and the fashion aspiration, view it as a town car only, and I have to say it’s better than the Fiat and the Mini.

But as an all-round car, I’m not sure. The model I selected was a 1.4-litre Slam with a chessboard roof lining, yellow trim on the wheels and a billion other sporty features besides. This meant it looked like a hot hatch, and one thing’s for sure: it wasn’t.

The Adam is not at all fast. It doesn’t handle with much enthusiasm and at 70 mph on the motorway it feels awfully busy – as if it’s sort of surprised to be there.

There are more things too. It doesn’t come with satellite navigation or a telephone, because it is designed to hook up to your smartphone and piggyback the features on that instead. In theory this is a properly good idea. I even asked a man from Vauxhall how it all worked, and in a matter of seconds, well, minutes – well, a quarter of an hour – he had the car talking to his phone.

But when I was left to fly solo, my phone treated the Adam in the way that a reluctant bitch treats a dog. There was no mating at all.

So. There are problems but overall it’s a likeable and practical little car. The only thing that would stop me buying one if I were in the market for such a thing is its other name. Adam is fine. Vauxhall, though? They’ve still got some way to go with that.

There are many wonderful cars on the market right now: the Ferrari 458 Italia, the McLaren 12C Spider, the Bentley Continental GT V8, the Mercedes SLS AMG, the Lexus LFA, the Aston Martin Vanquish and the BMW M6 Gran Coupé. All are fast, stylish and characterful and I’d happily own any one of them. But I can’t, because driving around in a flash car is like driving around naked. You tend to get noticed. Which is not something I find very enjoyable.

When I’m out and about I’m asked constantly to pose for a photograph. ‘It’s for my sister who’s going on a hockey tour,’ they always say, while rummaging around for their cameraphone.

Several minutes later, after I’ve heard all about the hockey tour and how her boyfriend has a BMW M3, she has found the camera on her phone and is asking passers-by to take a shot. But they don’t know which button to press so they end up taking a picture of their own nose. Or turning it off. And by the time they’ve had a lesson, someone else has arrived. ‘Oh, my son would never forgive me if I didn’t get a picture.’

Resisting the temptation to say, ‘Well, don’t tell him you saw me then,’ I agree to a snap, only to discover he’s a bit of a David Bailey and wants me to move into the shade because the shot’s a bit too backlit. And soon my two-minute trip to the shop for a pint of milk has turned into a two-hour photoshoot.

This, of course, is a time-consuming by-product of appearing on the television. But when it happens on the road, it’s actually pretty dangerous. People brake and swerve and cut across three lanes of traffic to get a shot of me. Once, a chap in a Mini was so busy videoing me he crashed into the car in front. A car that was being driven, amusingly, by a gorilla of a man.

One of these days someone is going to be killed and that’s why I want my next car to be inconspicuous. And that’s a problem, because every single car that offers the speed and excitement I crave comes with look-at-me styling. Except one: the Volkswagen Golf GTI.

So, I’m sorry. Every week I come here and review a car for your benefit, but this morning I’m reviewing a car for mine. Because the new GTI might just be the answer to all my prayers.

When Volkswagen first created the fast Golf thirty-seven years ago, it was truly classless. I knew housewives who scrimped and saved to buy one. And I knew someone who part-exchanged his Gordon-Keeble. It was also a car that was all things to all men. It could carry five people. It had a boot with rear seats that folded down. It had body panels that cost no more to repair than those on the normal Golf but, thanks to its 108-bhp engine, it was faster and more exciting than any of the sports cars that were kicking around at the time.

The Mk 2 GTI was pretty good as well, but since then the mojo has been slipping away. You had the impression that VW was making a GTI because it felt it had to, not because it was something that excited it in any way. But for the Mk 7 the company brought in the man who did the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. And from what I’ve been hearing, the original magic is back.

The engine is a 2-litre turbo that produces 217 bhp. But for an extra £980 you can have the performance pack, which takes the output up to 227 bhp. I tried that version and after a short time knew that in the real world this car could keep up with just about anything.