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.
Clarkson got one thing right: The fairer sex can really chew up the cell phone minutes.
Typical Clarkson. Top Gear is the best car show on TV. Clarkson has a very low opinion of Americans usually but then Ives is from the UK too.
iKia
‘nuf said.
Woah, I think I’ll take a steering wheel: I’ve seen how I drive with a PS2 joystick and I don’t want to share the road with me when those things are what controls a car…
Seriously, Jobs could really change the world with a new car design.
I think machine guns are more useful than parking lights.
And Apple could get some mileage from this review.
And companies will say “Apple has no experience making cars” but just as they did with the Cell Phone, Computer industry, Portable music players, the entire car industry will be revolutionary.
Maybe it will take a company like Apple to finally put an electric car on the market. GM certainly cannot, and It doesn’t look as if any other company can either. They offer electric “concept” cars but that amounts to nothing more than bait for suckers.
Maybe in ten or twelve years when Jobs is the richest man alive (by far). Then he’ll leave AAPL in capable hands and do something for kids with Aids and build a car and a spaceship and revolutionize pan-oceanic travel.
MW:somewhat
At the local Best Buy, the Apple desktop and notebooks outsold all Windoze based machines combined in the weeks before christmas.
So the Phenomenon at the Big Universities has now moved to the mainstream stores in the US.
Can we move that overseas as well?
This might be amusing if Clarkson wasn’t such a wanker…
If Apple made a car it would be great. It would still be a crappy internal combustion engine, but it would get fantastic mileage. It would be well engineered like the best Germany has to offer.
It would only work on roads built by Apple though. These would be the best roads around, but no one else would be on them, and they would only go to Apple’s front door in Cupertino.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft cars would be everywhere. Crappy they would be, but everyone would be driving them and they’d only work on Microsoft roads, but those horrible roads full of potholes would go everywhere.
With the amount of electronic on engines these days, Apple, could be innovating something. But I wouldn’t expect any car soon.
We are in Post-Computing Times and Apple has stated this.
Yet, if customers want it… who knows?
PS2 Joystick? Ha! That’s so 2005. Now swap my steering wheel out with a Nintendo Wiimote!
Clarkson a wanker hey? No, I don’t think so.
He is erudite and funny, he has no truck with the ‘elf ‘n safety brigade of liberal apparatchik goody goody tree huggers, who generally cause more wars and global warming than they avoid despite their best intentions…
Clarkson is the hero of the common sense man.
Even if he goes OTT on occasions.
Apple please don’t build a car. Just keep building great computers. Instead, retrain some of the automotive CEOs to understand that risk is good and it’s all about customer satisfaction. Everything else is secondary. Simplify the options and make it work for most people. Let the great engineers rise to the top and dictate the design.
Focus groups have some good input, but let the designers design the car. Have them work directly with the engineers and let the engineers work with the manufacturers. Everyone should understand the other’s job. Now that we have a good design and understand how to build it and can manufacture it people will buy it like crazy.
It’s not that easy though. Cars are complicated things and have a huge list of conflicting requirements. When that nasty internal combustion engine is gone lots of new design options open up, but there’s all those safety, range, space and environmental issues.
I think there is one thing we can all agree on: Cars need machine guns.
How about an ode to today’s apple stock crash?
Re: Steering wheel…
Yeah, those PS controllers can drive a car, but you can’t steer with your knee, so that would fail in the US.
And besides, PS gamers who are serious about driving games buy… <a >A Steering Wheel</a>.
Sorry, link.
@Reality Sucks…
your analysis is correct except you forgot one version. For a $79.95 upgrade you can get the Parallels add on edition and drive on both MS and Apple Roads. OR you could just use the BOOTCAMP switch at start up and decide to drive on either MS or Apple roads exclusively.
Either way…. driving a MS car limits you to only driving on MS roads. Using an Apple car allows you to drive on 100% of the available roads in the world.
If Apple designed a car…
(I’m trying to be funny here…
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1: The windshield would be so shiny and reflective that it would block small children and animals from view.
2: The car would come as a “all in one device” requiring a 300 mile trip to the local Apple Store for repair with no “loaner car” given in the meanwhile.
3: There would be a standard one year warranty, two or three more years would be extra.
4: The battery won’t be replaceable, requiring a whole new car if it dies.
5: Some “creative” would decide it would be cool to have “Stacks” appear as a HUD.
6: Any color you like, as long as it was black or white or sometimes Product RED.
7: The company logo would be etched into the headlights to make a pair of Apple’s siloutes on the road as you travel.
8: iTunes visuals would appear on the ceiling whenever one played a iTMS song.
9: Apple would switch the opertaing system, then the processors, then the engine and transmission around at apparantly no notice.
10: About two years after owning the AppleCar, it would suddenly be “uncool” to own it, requiring a purchase of the newer, slimer, AppleCarNano in order to remain “cool”.
Thank, you, I’ll be here all week…
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I’ve seen Clarkson as a participant in the British show QI (Quite interesting), so somehow this doesn’t surprise me.
@ Uh Oh
Can’t handle a 3% drop? Wuss.
Now if only we could interest Daihatsu and Volkswagen to enter into a joint venture to produce a car. I suggest: The Daihatsu Gesundheit.
Clarkson for Prime Minister.
Vote Now here —
http://www.petitiononline.com/JC4PM/petition.html
The best part of the Apple iCar is that it would never crash.
@ Whimsy
Problem is, the stereo only plays Yngwie Rammstein.
“How about an ode to today’s apple stock crash?”
Otherwise known as a buying opportunity. It doesn’t have to be odious, Miss Uh Oh from Melodrama.
Oh yea
11: Al Gore, the “enviromentalist” would have to have three of them on his desk.
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@ Jim – TIV
That sir, was a fantastic, well-drafted response. It’s all about options, and Apple has them all beat.
Come to think of it, can you imagine the option list for such a car? Would iPod integration be standard I wonder?
An Apple car. If only, I say…
Fighters get flown using joysticks as opposed to the traditional yoke and other planes are starting trends toward that direction so cars aren’t that farfetched. As with cars with steering wheels, knee jerk reactions and inattentiveness or reckless driving will still cause most of the accidents. Besides, joysticks much more easily free up our cell phone hands =)
no need for expensive, weighty airbags
Mostly because the airbag is between this guy’s ears.
“It would only work on roads built by Apple though. These would be the best roads around, but no one else would be on them, and they would only go to Apple’s front door in Cupertino.”
Old, tired analogy.
@ GlossyHMEyes
“Apple’s siloutes”
”opertaing system”
”apparantly no notice”
”newer, slimer, AppleCarNano”
I’m off to buy one of those apparantly slimer opertaing siloutes
Schools are defunct.
“retrain some of the automotive CEOs to understand that risk is good and it’s all about customer satisfaction”
There are CEOs in the car business who are car guys and not finance guys, but they tend to be in charge of smaller companies like Porsche and Ferrari.
-jcr
“no need for expensive, weighty airbags”
Marriage isn’t for everyone.
Qka
Well like him or loathe him he has one of the best and most watched snd entertaining programs on TV, one which is so successful in fact that it has forced the opposition to take their own programming away from that particular time slot. He has made what started as a car programme so entertaining that even people who hate cars watch it, indeed love it. He has also written some of the best selling books in the UK and has just won awards for said books in a book reading society which is pretty selective and choosy about who it rewards in such matters. He is also so well known around the world that he is asked for autographs as far afield as China and Russia. He is a respected journalist and has done documentaries on technology that has changed mankind and also madly perhaps driven a car to the North Pole for that matter. Yep he is a bit of a prat too…
But by compraison you have done what precisely?
Yep thought so.
There is a rumour floating around that Proton wishes to dispose of Group Lotus, including the UK company’s consulting arm which executes technical development work for many major auto companies and as many smaller ones.
If Apple were to get involved in the shark tank that is the world’s automotive industry, they could acquire Lotus (motto of founder: “first, add lightness”) as a working think-tank for how best-of-breed computing technology can integrate into world-class chassis and powertrain development.
Personally, I’d love to see the Esprit replacement (Etna/Esprit/whatever) married to Apple’s approach to human factors; maybe that would be an opportunity to show just how appalling BMW’s iDrive (or any of those systems) really is in real-world usage.
Porsche and Ferrari?
Sorry to be picky but Porsche are in the process of trying to gain control of VW and Ferrari of course are owned by Fiat.
Not quite so small after all.
Top Gear is one of the best shows on TV and Clarkson is a big reason. I wish this article was from the show because I’d love to hear how he would speak these words… and how the BBC guys would edit the video. These Top Gear guys can make the most boring thing interesting so they would make the iPhone look like the marvel that it is.
MCCFR
You are right that Lotus would certainly be the most Apple of automotive companies being experimental and at the forefront of new technologies and lightweight vehicles, regularly producing the best performance to weight ratios out there. Indeed some of the greatest of F1 advances were created by their founder Graham Chapman including the modern rear engined racing car of the modern era and ‘engine as structural element’ design that lies at the base of all modern racers. Unfortunately for some time they have been unable to exploit that great unmatched talent to make real money.
Ampar
It’s weighty windbags, not airbags.
SB Dude, I agree. Oh how the Microsoft Broadcasting Company would have a heart attack at such words being expressed on their channel these days eh.
I say this having heard their excruciating brown nosing of Bill Gates ‘State of the Nation’ speech this morning despite previous warnings from the Governing Body to cut out the sycophancy.
lets get real, GM, Ford, and all the others have been making cars for a long time, and know what people want.
Some computer company isn’t just going to get it right
we heard something similar last year?
@ HotinPlaya
Actually, in this case, I think that theory applies. Apple knows how to build computers, and they know how to build easy-to-use pocket devices, so a phone was a natural evolution of those strengths.
A car, OTOH, is chock full of all kind of technology that Apple has no experience with at all.
I can see them partnering with VW or something, creating interfaces and other interior appointments. But until there are a few reputable crash-test labs in Cupertino, I’ll stick with my Jetta.
Spyinthesky…
Not wishing to be anally retentive, but I think you’re confusing the Monty Python man (Graham) with Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, a man who tried to make the corduroy cap an acceptable fashion statement for a middle-aged white man.
Colin Chapman was a god of innovation, arguably combined to one of the most ruthless personalities ever seen in an Englishman; I once saw a TV programme where somebody argued that, if Enzo Ferrari would have met the Devil, Lucifer would have landed up working for Il Commendatore. My extension to this would be that if the Horned One met ACB, he would have landed up working for Group Lotus and probably paying for the privilege.
As for your statement on Lotus’ profitability; I think you’d be surprised what Lotus’ unparalleled approach to product segmentation (i.e. using the same chassis technology for the Elise/Exige/Europa/etc) has achieved. Also, Lotus’ VXA technology – which allows them to create just about any vehicle from a range of glued-together aluminium extrusions – will continue to allow them to maintain a profitable niche car business.
If Apple built a car it would be an Aptera
I’ve figured out how to drive a car by waving my hands about.
MCCFR –
Thanks for catching the Graham/Colin discrepancy and setting him/her straight.
ACBC used what came to be known as the Chapman Strut on the Lotus 12 in 1957, but surely the co-author of the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch deserves a strut of his own, don’t you think?
Another thing – The bit about adding lightness should really go back at least a couple of steps beyond Lotus. Although ACBC was known for considering a race car that was still in good shape after having won a race to be overbuilt, the maxim “Simplicate, and add lightness” had previously been employed by aeronautic engineers Ed Heinemann and William Bushnell Stout.
Not to be a spoilsport, but can you imagine the class-action lawsuit if Apple were to create a joystick or wiimote type of steering system? She’d complain that Apple wouldn’t license it to anyone else.
Now for reality, I have a feeling that NHTSA wouldn’t approve a steering system that wasn’t a wheel, and without federal approval, the potential liability could bankrupt any company.
KenC , me old china, stop taking those little red pills !!!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
Amazing, Funny, Brilliant.
KenC , me old china, stop taking those little red pills !!!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
Amazing, Funny, Brilliant.
KenC , me old china, stop taking those little red pills !!!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
Amazing, Funny, Brilliant.
KenC , me old china, stop taking those little red pills !!!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
Amazing, Funny, Brilliant.
KenC , me old china, stop taking those little red pills !!!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
Amazing, Funny, Brilliant.
If Apple wants to get into the auto business, they need to develop a “think different”, all-weather means of transportation.
One that doesn’t need 2 tons of material, a 250+hp combustion engine, and 20 gallons of fossil fuel to move a single person around.
And one that people would actually want to own. No Fisher-Price, Tokyo Auto Show concepts here.
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But my vote is for Apple to stay away from the business. Surely even Steve can see the automotive era is on its way out, as traffic gets forever worse & the makers fight for the scraps. Today’s streets aren’t worth fighting for.
Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson have raised the bar in Automobile shows. Who else would “race their own fuel”, or play tag with a Tank in open country! Truly the best Car show EVER!!
Air bags are only in vehicles because folks won’t wear safety belts. I believe it is documented that if folks used safety belts religiously then Airbags would not only be unnecessary, they would be dangerous!
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
I thought the North Pole was all open water by now (or so the TV tells us).
Besides, didn’t Russia recently claim the Pole as theirs? Hope Clarkson had a passport.
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
I thought the North Pole was all open water by now (or so the TV tells us).
Besides, didn’t Russia recently claim the Pole as theirs? Hope Clarkson had a passport.
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
I thought the North Pole was all open water by now (or so the TV tells us).
Besides, didn’t Russia recently claim the Pole as theirs? Hope Clarkson had a passport.
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
I thought the North Pole was all open water by now (or so the TV tells us).
Besides, didn’t Russia recently claim the Pole as theirs? Hope Clarkson had a passport.
Clarkson DRIVES to North Pole in a Toyota
I thought the North Pole was all open water by now (or so the TV tells us).
Besides, didn’t Russia recently claim the Pole as theirs? Hope Clarkson had a passport.
Air bags are only in vehicles because folks won’t wear safety belts.
Air bags are in vehicles because they’re the distant next-best thing to full racing safety gear. Think people hate seat belts? Imagine a racing harness, HANS, fire suit, helmet, etc.
True story: I have a relative who was recently blinded in a bad side-impact crash. He had his belt on, but was driving an older car without side-impact bags. You can imagine what happened. After seeing what he’s been through, I’ll take any crash protection there is!
I want a nice pair of Indian TaTas…..
Gives “hugging the curves” a new meaning.
Top Gear
The Best car TV show ever bar none.
Makes those sycophantic prats at Motorweek look like, well, sycophantic prats.