You’d think a man like Ben Collins, better known to many as The Stig from the Top Gear TV show would have quite a collection of cars. It’s not uncommon for TV stars and professional racers to have dozens of cars, new and old, at their disposal ranging from off-roaders to supercars and everything in between. But you might be surprised to hear that Collins only owns three cars, and all of them are what we would now consider to be old. More surprising still is that Collins refuses to buy modern machinery at all. Why is this? And more importantly, what are the three cars Collins owns?
While interviewing Collins earlier this year on his Dunsfold lap record with the Praga Bohema, he hailed the new hypercar for its pointy handling, crediting much of this to the fact that the carbon fiber beast weighs so little. Both the analog feel and lightweight nature of the Bohema are traits Collins feels are missing from modern cars; and not just from the last four or five years, but dating back as far as 2012, even.
Some say…
“There are some [cars] like the new GT3 RS that I think walk a really fine line, cause the grip is very high,” says Collins. “I really enjoyed that car; they’ve managed to sort of get the best of both worlds [handling and involvement], without making it feel like it’s on train tracks. But many other automakers are falling into the trap of train-track handling and over-assistance [from the computers], particularly in your sort of everyday type of performance car.”
Cars are becoming more and more rapid with each new iteration, but somewhere along the way, they’re prioritized this outright capability over feeling at one with the car. Car fans were quick to label the Nissan GT-R as a ‘video game car’ when it came out in the mid 2000s, but modern cars make that look like a real driver’s machine. And Collins is worried about where we go next with the likes of the BMW M3 and M5. “With the next generation of BMW, I don’t know where that will take us or take them, rather. They’re moving away from manual gearboxes, and it’s just at that point where you’re on a slippery slope losing control to HAL 9000. And they’re just ever larger.”
“Larger and heavier, that seems to be the mistake. You get back into an older car that weighs less, and it’s interesting, because there’s obviously a lot of talk about safety systems [being the reason for the weight increase] but when you put one of those older cars on a newer, more modern tire, they’re unbelievable. You don’t even need ABS to stop, and you don’t need ABS to feel what the tire is doing. You can quite intuitively do it all yourself.”
– Ben Collins
Collins admits that he has an advantage because he’s a professional driver for a living, but he credits poor tire technology for the reason there were so many crashes of high-performance cars in the ’90s and 2000s. “I think reason a lot of people spun off in the ’90s was because the tires just weren’t there. It’s the tire technology that has just been completely revolutionized. Yeah, so maybe that’s a bit of an, I don’t know, open secret, but no, we’re airbagged up to the hilt and the computers taking over. It’s a shame.”
We’ve seen the influence modern tires can have on older performance cars, not just with the massive improvement in lap time from the Porsche Carrera GT around the Nürburgring, but even on more humble performance cars like a Golf GTI.
So with modern machinery not having the driver involvement that Collins likes, what are the three cars he chooses to keep in his garage? Many fans of Collins who have followed him for years will likely know of his 997.2-generation 911 Turbo. He’s been known to put some massive mileage on it and treat it like a real daily instead of babying it and only driving it in good weather. But his other two cars are arguably more interesting: a Lancia Delta Integrale Evo I, which Collins describes as his “absolute baby,” and an ex-army Land Rover Wolf, a version of the previous Land Rover Defender manufactured specifically for military use.
Unlike most high-profile car celebrities, Collins hasn’t done the thing of buying and selling tons of cars either. When asked if he had sold cars he regretted or whether he’d consider selling either of his current cars, his answer was to the point:
“No, these are the best cars I’ve ever owned. I love them. Love them to bits. I love the functional aspect, and they’re old enough that you’ve got analog feedback, and they come from before this strange phase of the growth hormone when cars got so big and fat.”
– Ben Collins
Collins muses over the fact that even a 997-generation 911, which doesn’t seem like an old car to many of us, is tiny in comparison to the latest 992 generation. “The 911 is hilarious. You park that next to a 991 or 992, and it’s like someone shrunk it. But when you’re inside it, there’s plenty of space, and it’s a great machine.”
He’s full of praise for what Porsche engineers have done with the newer generations, but just can’t cope with the size of them, telling us, “The newer 911s are just huge. They’re fantastic. The tech is amazing. But they are big.” As for his 997.2, though, Collins gushes: “I love it. I love the design, the feedback, that the car moves around a bit. It’s just got a good vibe.”
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So there you have it. New cars are too big, too fat, and too anesthetized for the Stig, and the only three cars you need are a 911 Turbo, an old Land Rover Defender, and a Lancia Delta Integrale.
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