BMW 730d SE

Quite rightly, it is no longer acceptable to mock people for being black, homosexual, ginger, deformed or Irish, so let us start this morning by mocking Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Al Gore, Obama Barrack and John McCain. People, in other words, who are all left-handed.

At present, this terrible condition affects around 11% of the world’s population and yet in certain fields the number is high enough to raise statistical eyebrows. Quite apart from American politics, there is tennis, which is dominated by lefties. McEnroe, Connors, Rusedski, Ivanisevic and that Spanish ape whose name I’ve forgotten all hold their bats with the wrong hand.

What’s more, if you give birth to a leftie, there is a good chance he’ll go into space. One in four Apollo astronauts were left-hand-drive. But conversely, things are not so rosy if he wishes to become a top-flight racing driver. All the big stars in recent years have been normal, apart from Gerhard Berger. He’ll also struggle to be a writer because his handwriting will be all smudged.

We can see from all this that left-handed people are different to you and me. In short, they are what science calls “weirdos”.

History is less kind. The word “sinister” is actually derived from the Latin sinister, meaning left. Gauche is left. Maladroit is left. Derek Hatton is left. All the things you don’t want to be are left. Left has come to mean bad, clumsy, difficult or awkward. And it's easy to see why this happened.

It is, for example, very difficult for a left-handed person to operate a camera or be a woman. Almost all are men and that’s sinister for sure. What’s more, a left-handed person can adjust more easily to seeing underwater than a right-hooker. There’s only one conclusion to be drawn from this — their eyes are not human. Furthermore, they grow more pubic hair more quickly than a normal person, and this would imply that they may be wolves, or bears.

Certainly, we can deduce from this that it’s not only the wiring of their arms that is the wrong way round. Their whole body is an electrical mess. I’m surprised they don’t sneeze every time they get an erection. Certainly, they have a greater tendency to stutter. And many are slovenly time-keepers.

(Actually, I made that last bit up simply to annoy the producer of Top Gear who is a) left-handed; b) three hours away from where he’s supposed to be at any given moment of the day; and c) like all left-handed people, absolutely convinced that he is in some way “special”.)

People from other minorities never try to claim they are better than the majority. You never get gingers going around saying that because of Simon Heffer and Nicholas Witchell, people with orange hair are cleverer than average. Nor do you get homosexuals pointing at Oscar Wilde with a smug look on their faces. They just want to be seen as “the same” as everyone else.

But people who need upside-down hands to write their signature on a cheque spend a huge amount of time and effort forming clubs designed to prove that because Leonardo da Vinci was left-hand-drive, they are superior beings.

In this respect, they are a bit like the freemasons or Mensa, that magnificently strange organisation for people who think they're special because they can put some shapes in the right hole while playing chess.

Mind you, left-hookers are worse. They lobby the makers of household appliances to consider their plight when designing computers, cookers and power tools. They even complain about sinks, and I’m sorry, but I fail to see how something that is perfectly symmetrical can possibly favour right-handed people. Maybe they are saying the plughole isn’t big enough to handle all their pubic hair.

Frankly, I’d just tell them we right-handers have our problems too. The sextant, for instance is very difficult for us to operate and er . . . I’m sure there are other things as well.

What annoys me most of all about southpaws, though, is that these sinister fish-wolves have a point. I have never knowingly met a left-hand-drive bore. For some reason, they tend to be interesting, different, worth having round for dinner.
Sniffpetrol.co.uk, for instance, is written by a left-handed person. Angelina Jolie is left-handed. And while I can’t say for sure, I bet Stephen Fry is sinistral. A word only he would understand.

And luckily, all of this brings me neatly to the BMW 730 diesel.

You see, ordinary businessmen who have no problem using scissors have always bought, if they were in the market for a large and well-appointed mobile living room, a Mercedes S-class. The main reason for buying something else is that you’re the chairman of a large British company, such as Jaguar, in which case you’d have to get a Jag.

Of course, if you are Bonio, out of U2, you will see a Mercedes as a bit Institute of Directors so you will buy a Maserati. If you are Sir Alan Sugar, you will have a Rolls-Royce Phantom because a Mercedes is too cheap. If you are a Manchester United footballist, you will have a Bentley because you are a frightful show-off. If you are sane, you will have a Range Rover and if you are bonkers, you will have a Maybach.

In short, then, before buying the big ugly Beemer, you would have to say, “I am not a businessman, sane, Bonio, Alan Sugar, Wayne Rooney, or Theo Pamphlet from Dragons’ Den”. You’d have to be a bit odd to be none of these things. You’d have to have strange underwater eyes and the hairiest scrotum in the world. To go for the left-field car, you would — and can you see what I’ve done here — have to be wired up all wrong.

Now, though, there’s a new BMW 7-series. You wouldn’t think so from looking at it, or from studying the engine, which is largely the same as before. But this is a brand new car.

Headlines? Well the cheapest model — the 730 diesel — starts at £53,730 and for that you get a car that produces just 192g/km of carbon dioxide, which is less than comes from the back of some Ford Mondeos or a cow. More importantly, it will achieve 45mpg on the open road, if you are careful with the throttle. And if you are not, 0-62mph in a shade over 7sec and a top speed of 153.

That’s all lovely. Mind you, I’m surprised they didn’t make it 2mph faster. Then they could have claimed it was so fast it had to be limited. But there we are. Transparency is what it’s all about these days.

Further up the scale, there’s the usual range of engine choices including a twin turbo V8, and the usual range of what the backroom computer nerds have put on the options list. You can have, for instance, a head-up display that keeps you abreast of the prevailing speed limit, or you can have a thermal imaging camera that spots pedestrians lurking in the shadows, or you can have side-mounted cameras that can spot traffic at blind junctions. That’s all lovely too.

Sadly, though, the 7-series is let down by two things. First of all, BMW makes much noise, quite rightly, about the inherent sportiness of all its cars. But sportiness is all wrong in a car like this. It’s like buying a coat when you want a tablecloth. Yes, it has great steering, great reactions and great urgency, but they all come at a price. And the price is comfort and quietness. Put simply, a Mercedes is a more relaxing ride and in a big, very wide, very heavy and completely unsporting package, that’s what you want.

Then there’s the iDrive system. In essence, one button — think of it as a computer mouse — controls thousands of controls on the car and I’m sure you can get used to it in the same way that you can get used to having a nasty headache.

Here’s the thing, though. In Germany you operate the button with your right hand. That’s fine. But here, it’s the other way round, and as any normal person who’s tried to operate a computer mouse with their left hand knows, it’s nigh-on impossible. In short, then, the right-hand-drive 7-series works only for left-hand-drive people.

The Clarksometer

BMW 730d SE

ENGINE 2993cc, six cylinders

POWER 241bhp @ 4000rpm

TORQUE 398 lb ft @ 1750rpm

TRANSMISSION Six-speed automatic

FUEL 39.2mpg (combined)

CO2 192g/km

ACCELERATION 0-62mph: 7.2sec

TOP SPEED 153mph

PRICE £53,730

ROAD TAX BAND F (£210 a year)

RELEASE DATE On sale

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/art icle5676222.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

I thought it was hilarious!

I think you either love him or hate him!..