GT90 in a flat spin

Earls Court becomes the fashion capital of the western

world this week as the London Anorak Show opens its

doors to members of the public.

Better known as the Motor Show, families will be donning

their finest acrylic fibres and braving the Piccadilly

Line so that they may gawp at all that’s new and shiny.

However, if you want to see all that’s really new and

shiny, you need to stay on the Piccadilly Line until you

arrive at Terminal Four. And then you should catch a

plane to Japan.

The trouble is that the London Motor Show clashes

with the Tokyo Motor Show, and there’s no surprises for

guessing which one is rated most highly by the exhibitors.

So, if a car manufacturer has spent all year developing a

new concept to wow the crowds at an exhibition, it goes

to Japan, leaving London with the mainstream stuff, the

kind of cars that are parked in your street anyway.

That said, it will be your first chance to see the Ferrari

F50 (which makes the show worthwhile all on its own)

and the TVR Cerbera, but as its astonishing engine will

be off, onlookers will be deprived of its USP.

Other notable debutantes include the MGF, the

Renault Megane, the really rather nice Fiat Bravo and, of

course, the fascinating and interesting Vauxhall Vectra

which, in case you can’t find it, is the one that looks

pretty much the same as a Cavalier.

However, pretty well all the one-off concept cars will

be in Tokyo, and in case you’re wondering why we don’t

move the dates of our show, I should remind you that we

once did. But because it no longer straddled the half-term

break, no one came. And anyway, the new dates meant

we were competing with Paris.

And all the manufacturers thought France more important

than London anyway. We could, of course, move

our event to June but I’ve just checked and there’s a show

on then in Pune, a small town 120 miles from Bombay.

And I’m pretty damn sure that’s where the car makers

would concentrate their resources.

The upshot of all this is that you won’t be able to see

the Ford GT90, and that’s a pity because it’s America’s

first attempt at a supercar.

At this point, I’m sure, Wilbur and Myrtle will be

running around waving their arms in the air and pointing

to the Corvette ZR-1 and the Dodge Viper, saying that

these are supercars. But they’re not.

And nor is that absurd Vector which is made in

agonizingly small numbers in California, and nor was the

Pontiac Fiero.

Supercars are what the Europeans do. We are the only

ones who know how to make a car go quickly . . . round

corners.

People at Ford in Detroit say the old GT40 was a

supercar and that they made it, but again, they’re wrong.

It may have had an American engine but the rest of it, the

important stuff, was as American as Elgar.

The GT90 is their first attempt and it seems to work

rather well, because it is capable of 235mph, making it the

fastest road car in the world. It does 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds

so it is pretty sprightly on that front too. And because it is

mid-engined, light and sits on a modified Jaguar XJ220

chassis, it should be pretty nifty through the bends too.