Apple’s iPhone “sits in the pantheon of great inventions alongside the wheel, fire and Sky+,” Jeremy Clarkson writes amidst a car review (Daihatsu Materia) for The Times. “It’s one of those things that come into your life and you think: ‘How in the name of God did I ever manage without it?'”
Clarkson writes, “Sure, the camera, as has been suggested, can’t take pictures if it’s too dark, too bright or something in between, but everything else is brilliant. You type out texts on a proper qwerty keyboard, and even if you make a mistake it uses witchcraft to correct the error. And then there’s the telephone, which comes with big, special-needs numbers that you can’t miss even if you have fingers like burst sausages. And on top of this, it’s an iPod.”
Clarkson writes, “Problems? Honestly, there aren’t any. I’ve had mine hacked so it works on Vodafone, and I’m sorry, but the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that I’m a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when I’m on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort.”
“This brings me on to an interesting idea. Why doesn’t Apple make a car? The fact of the matter is that the established car makers are timid and afraid of change. They think the mini MPV is a revolution and that the Smart car can be mentioned in the same breath as penicillin. This means they never think outside the box,” Clarkson writes.
“Why, for instance, does a car have a steering wheel? Or pedals? Or a dashboard? No, really. As anyone under the age of 15 will tell you, the handset for a PlayStation can be used to steer, accelerate and brake a car. And there are still spare buttons on the handset that can be used to fire machineguns,” Clarkson writes.
“And, of course, without a steering wheel or a dashboard, there’d be a lot more space in the cabin, and no need for expensive, weighty airbags. And that’s just me, thinking off the top of my head,” Clarkson writes.
Clarkson writes, “I feel fairly sure that if Apple were asked to make a car, it would come up with an automotive iPod, and within weeks we’d view the current alternatives in the same way that we now view the cassette tape, the LP and the 8-track.”
The rest of the article, if you care about a review of the Daihatsu Materia, is here.
When auto reviews become more about iPhone than the car, you know – if you didn’t know already – that Apple’s got a major hit on their hands.