Andrew Frankel: Motor sport mania on an island with a 40mph speed limit

I grew up on Jersey and recently returned to catch up with some friends and family, one of whom, fine fellow that he is, said he’d be happy to lend me a car, which turned out to be a rather lovely first-generation ‘997’ Porsche 911 Turbo. This on an island nine miles by five with a national maximum speed of 40mph and country lanes restricted to 15mph, a limit I would once have been able to break on foot.

Of course he keeps it for trips to mainland UK and France and on a daily basis knocks about in something altogether more suitable. But even with such explosive overtaking ability under your right foot, I’ve long learned that the only way to cope on the island is to give in and not even try. As a teenager I used to fight it, which largely explains how I managed to write off three cars on Jersey before my 18th birthday. And just having a vehicle of innate quality, built by people who understand how it should feel, elevated the experience far beyond what would have been possible from the rent-a-bore I usually stooge about in. Whatever speed you drive.

What’s interesting about Jersey is that despite the limitations outlined above, it remains full of both motor sport people and motor sport heritage. Four grands prix were held there between 1947-50, the last of which was a non-championship Formula 1 round and drivers as eminent as Luigi Villoresi, Louis Chiron, Raymond Sommer and Prince Bira all travelled to the island to try their best along a long, thin 3.2-mile road course along the southern seafront and back along a parallel road. Today Bouley Bay still hosts two rounds of the British Hillclimb Championship, there are sprint races on the three-mile long straight road on the west coast, sand racing on the beach and the Jersey Rally is now in its 40th year.

But the only time I ever got to drive properly fast there was once a year on Boxing Day when members of the Jersey Old Motor Club used to congregate at the docks and drive through all 12 parishes on their way to lunch. I’m afraid to say that my brothers, father and I always behaved rather poorly, not helped by being egged on by family friend and 13-time Le Mans competitor Michael Salmon turning up in his beautiful 1939 Derby Bentley and driving like the wind.

“I blush to think of how we drove that car around that small island”

My father’s answer to this was to wheel out his Derby, a rather ugly two-seat bitsa, but very light and powered by a supercharged 4¼-litre engine. He had some other old cars too, but his idiot sons had eyes only for ‘The Blower’ and the pre-Christmas horse-trading that went on to secure it was, on reflection, perhaps a touch unedifying. I blush to think of how we drove that car around that small island and the speeds we reached, none of which I’m owning up to here, even 40 years on.

I have news, good or bad depending on your perspective: as of next summer all new cars sold in the UK will be allowed to emit no more than 68dB of noise, down from the current 72dB. Doesn’t sound like much does it, except that the decibel scale is not linear, but logarithmic. I don’t understand the maths but I am told an increase of just 3dB is interpreted by the human ear as being twice as loud, so you can imagine the effect of a 4dB reduction.

For fans of sonorous engine notes, the news is perhaps not as bad as it might at first seem because the measurements are made outside the vehicle, allowing all sorts of devious methods for piping sound – real or otherwise – into the cabin itself. The people who are likely to suffer most are those in the aftermarket exhaust department, because drivers whose cars make more noise than their homologation papers state will be fined. This in itself is not new, but the introduction of microphones to record the sound of your car combined with cameras to read its numberplate is. So now you can be done just innocently sitting at some traffic lights because, whether through fault or design, your exhaust makes a little more noise than the authorities say it should. What a lovely world we live in.

Recently, I spent a day in an Aston Martin DBS – the second-generation 2007 car – and quite lovely it was too: low miles, manual, perfect condition and yours for £100,000… But it made me think what value the DB9, from which it is derived, now represents. Yes it lacks a little of the punch of the ‘S’ and its fancy-pants carbon bodywork but a car of the same age, mileage and gearbox is less than £40,000. And they’re rare too: of the precisely 100 DB9s on the Autotrader website right now, just four have the correct number of pedals in the footwell. And now an inconveniently large birthday has been and gone since I last wrote this column and I am, according to some, now officially an elderly gentleman, I must say I’m mighty tempted. Just as well, then, that my diary remains crammed full of less interesting cars I need to go and drive, thus saving me from the age-old trap of realising you can afford to buy a car but not afford to run it.

DS squares up to Germans 

French maker tempts Merc and BMW buyers 
The No8 Etoile is one of DS’s better efforts of late. That descending roofline robs space in the back and, inside, its screens look like they should belong in a much more affordable car in the group – like a Citroën. But it has punchy performance and the ride is genuinely excellent.

Verdict: The best DS since the DS3 Racing.

Kei Honda – a mighty mini

Super-N is the latest ‘interesting small EV’
The new 3.4m long Super-N arrives next year as only the third kei car ever to be officially sold in the UK after the Daihatsu Copen and Suzuki Cappuccino. It looks fun, but is likely to prove rather more so thanks to its simulated engine noise and virtual gearshifts. I can’t wait to drive it.

Audi A2 to return in ’26 

New version won’t be so bold as the old 
The old Audi A2 (above) was one of the most attractive, innovative small cars of recent times but very expensive to build thanks to its aluminium construction. Well it looks like it’s coming back, or at least the name is. It’ll sit on a standard VW-group EV platform and we should expect to see its styling reflect that of its predecessor.