Jeremy Clarkson: Likeness

“The engine sounds like Victorian plumbing — it looks like Victorian plumbing as well, to be honest.”

Jeremy Clarkson

The Times March 22, 2007, reviewing the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article1549519.ece

“Can we be honest for a moment. You didn't have a good Christmas, did you? Your turkey was too dry, your kids spent all day glued to their internets, and you didn't bother watching the Big Christmas Film because you've owned it for years on DVD. What you should have had to liven things up was my mother. She arrived at my house with a steely resolve that the Christmas holidays would be exactly like the Christmas holidays she enjoyed when she was a child. Only without the diphtheria or the bombing raids.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 1

Holiday , Christmas , Housing

“What foreigners like most about Britain is not multiculturalism or tolerance or any of that new Labour nonsense. No, what they like is our history. Shakespeare. Blenheim Palace. Soldiers in preposterous hats who don't move. Yes, they may go and see some dead dogs in a modern art gallery but that's only because they've spent the morning on top of a sightseeing bus and they're freezing.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 17

Dogs , Art , History , Dead

“You really could call the new TVR Cerbera heavy metal were it not fashioned from plastic. The best way to experience this car is to be about seven miles away. As it comes toward you, it's like being in a horror movie. The monster is getting closer. The Thing. The Blob. Terror has no shape. But God, what a noise.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 6

God , Cars , Way , Fashion

“Then there’s the styling. Or rather, there isn’t. Any attempt to give these cars a tapering roofline or a curved rear end is wasteful of precious capacity, which means all of them look exactly – and I mean exactly – like chest freezers. And because they have such tiny wheels they actually look like chest freezers on casters. And that in turn means they look absurd.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Sunday Times June 8, 2008, reviewing the Nissan GT-R http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article4076537.ece

Cars

“Francis Bacon once said there is no beauty that hath not some strangeness to its proportion. Cameron Diaz proves that- she's got a mouth like a slice of watermelon. But the Flying Scotsman proves it to be wrong. There is no strangeness at all. He is exquisite to behold, partly because he is so nicely balanced and partly because he seems to shout "I AM VERY POWERFUL.'”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Beauty , Flying

“Over the years the Flying Scotsman has travelled the world and been owned by pretty well everyone except my wife, and possibly Kate Moss. As I write he's for sale again, for a not inconsiderable 2.5 million Pounds. That may seem a lot for something that no longer has a purpose, even if he is Britain's engineering heritage. But he is not simply a machine. Like an Aston Martin DB7 or an F-16 fighter, he works as an art form too, a piece of sculpture. So what if you can't go anywhere in him anymore. Put him in your garden and spend your days just looking at him.”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World , Art , Travel , Flying

“The Alfa Romeo GTV6 had the worst gearbox I've ever encountered, and the worst driving position and the worst record for reliability. Nevertheless, I bought one. I knew it was a hopeless basket case but I'd become smitten by the noise its engine made: a rumble in the jungle at low revs and almost an eerie howl as it neared the red line. I would put up with the massive bouts of truculence, the deep discomfort and the absurdly heavy steering because no car before, or since, has ever made such a glorious sound. It was music to the enthusiast's ears, like a cross between 'Ode to Joy' and 'Nessun Dorma.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 6

Music , Cars , Joy

“I'd had two days of training and figured it would be like playing on a PlayStation. And so it is. But can you imagine what it would be like trying to operate a PlayStation while inside a tumble dryer? Because that's what it's like trying to operate a remote-control camera in an F-15. More realistically, have your children tried to play on their Game Boys while being driven in the back of a car? And that's at 60mph in a vaguely straight line.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Source: And Another Thing: The World According to Clarkson Volume Two (2006), p. 6

Children , Cars , Imagination , Game

“Speed in itself is not exciting. As you sit in a Boeing, are you thrilled that it's ripping up the sky with a 500mph orgy of big numbers? No, and it's the same deal in a straight line in a straight road in a car. Two hundred mph. So what. What matters is acceleration and handling, an ability to take corners as though they're not there, and this is why the Ferrari F50 has been so well received by those who know. It's light, and simple, like a choux pastry in a world full of suet pudding.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

32
Born to be Riled (1999)

World , Cars , Light , Speed

“The job of dedicated missile boats is to pootle about, like mice in carpet slippers, waiting for an order to destroy an entire continent.”

Jeremy Clarkson

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Waiting

“Like many men, I can never find anything that I’m looking for, even when I’m actually looking at it. In a fridge, I think milk is actually invisible to the male eye. And so, it turns out, are dirty great holes in the fence.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Sunday Times September 6, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6823155.ece

Men , Thinking

“We see the same sort of thing in Japan. There was never a Mr. Toyota who, since he was a small boy, yearned for the day when he could build a small family hatchback that never broke down. And you can scour the history books until the sky turns green but you'll not find any mention of a young Timmy Datsun who stayed up until ten o'clock, even on school nights, devising his plan for a car with two milometers. Subarus are made by a romantic-sounding outfit called Fuji Heavy Industries. At night I bet the chairman sometimes forgets he has a car division. It'll just be another entry in his plofit and ross accounts. The only Japanese cars with even a trace of humanity are Hondas, and there's a very good reason for that. There was a Mr. Honda and he did have a vision when he was a small boy. Even today that vision still steers the engineers, and as a result there's a very definite correlation between the S2000 sports cars and those early motorbikes. It's solely because of this link with the past that I like Hondas more than any other Japanese cars.”

Jeremy Clarkson

Rolls-Royce, p. 18
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Books , School , Family , Cars