TASTING THE BITTER BURDEN OF WEALTH

+ Click to Enlarge PORSCHE CAYENNE GTS: If ever there was an excuse for being rich, this is it.

March 3, 2008
By Michael Booth

Critics claim London's mayor Ken Livingstone's £25 congestion charge for cars that emit more than 225g/km of CO2 is just another tactic in his class war with residents of Kensington.

As if that were a bad thing...!

Nobody likes rich people, not even other rich people. Why do you think they have those walls around the seats in First Class? So they don't have to look at each other's corpulent, scheming faces, that's why.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of nob-bashing. I'll rephrase that: sometimes we need our leaders to wade in on our behalf and redress some of the inequalities in society.

That's why countries have a sliding tax scale and why the rich are corralled into spirit-crushing ghettos called gated communities.

To taste for myself the bitter burden of wealth, I borrowed the latest Porsche, the £54 350 (South African price from R895 000) Cayenne GTS – a car that features on Wanted! posters in every Greenpeace office from here to the Finland Station.


HANDLES LIKE A SPORTS CAR: The suspension of the Porsche Cayennne GTS has been lowered by 2.5cm.
Double-click either arrow to watch.

Let me get this straight: first off, Porsche decided to build a lolloping great SUV that sprints and handles like a sports car then threw its considerable technological cunning at the project (resulting in that amazing adaptive air suspension). Everybody thought it was mad, then bought one.

But now Porsche has got rid of that air suspension, replaced it with conventional springs and lowered the car by 2.5cm to make it more like a sports car.

I drove it to London and, disappointingly, didn't experience any hostility despite belching CO2 at a rate of 361g/km. Not a half-hearted honk or a middle finger. Perhaps that was because everybody else was driving a Range Rover – the only people who can afford to drive into London these days.

What I did experience was the kind of smugness common to anyone who buys any Porsche, a satisfaction based on the knowledge you have bought the very best – the best design, the best engineering, though not the best-looking; the Cayenne is about as attractive as a cane toad's backside.

It is, though, brilliant – so alert, and with buckets of V8 power. The "Sport" and "Comfort" buttons seem to have the same effect as those on pedestrian crossings but the ride was not the Eastern Promises Turkish bath scene assault I was expecting; it was almost comfortable.

As for the black cabs...

Of course, the proposed £25 charge is not just for Porsches. It will hit any car that emits more than 225g/km of CO2, which includes such apparently blameless vehicles as some Peugeot 407s and Jaguar X-Types – even the little Mazda3 2.3MPS.

Fine by me. If they're making our lungs look like a coal-miner's loofah, they should be penalised. But there is just one problem with Ken's master plan to rid London of its soot-trumping Chelsea tractors: even the newest black cab emits 233g/km. - The Independent, London