Variable Valve Timings: Memoirs of a car tragic

by Chris Harris

Overview

Revered in the petrolhead community years before his star gig on Top Gear, automotive print and video journalist, racing driver, and the UK's favorite car geek reveals how all things motoring became his life's driving force

Tire destruction, power slides and continuous drooling.

Chris Harris has driven more cars than most people could ever dream of. His vast knowledge is legendary. He calls it 'unhinged geekery'. But we call it infectious enthusiasm, adrenaline-fueled escapism and peerless journalistic rigor and integrity.

And then there are his famous skills at the wheel, from city cars to rally cars, F1 to vintage, not forgetting the Guinness World Record 3.4km sideways in an electric car.

And now for the first time, Harris is going all out with that unhinged geekery, and takes us down the road of his life-long adventure with the automobile - - along surprising diversions, around hazards and obstructions, down the fast lane collecting Gs and back to the lock-up to prep the stock.

From the six-year-old who could recite the stats from What Car? magazine to the YouTube car guru whose honest reviews got him banned by Ferrari. From the Scalextric track of his childhood, to podiums as a racing driver out in the world. From behind his garage doors to the floodlit Top Gear studio.

Variable Valve Timings brings you an incredibly engaging story of adventure and petrolhead joy, told with wit, warmth and disarming honesty. This book is a true one-off, just like Chris.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529913606
Publisher:	Penguin Random House UK
Publication date:	11/19/2024
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Chris Harris is an automotive journalist, amateur racing driver and TV presenter. He has worked as a reviewer and columnist for many automotive magazines including Autocar, Evo and Jalopnik. Chris has been appearing on Top Gear since 2016, and became one of the three main presenters in 2017. He also has his own web series Chris Harris on Cars, now hosted by Topgear.com. This is his first book.

Read an Excerpt

ONE
TOY CARS

It always begins with a toy car. Or at least it always began
with a toy car – nowadays it’s probably a tweet or a TikTok
or something virtual. But if you’re someone of an age who can
even vaguely relate to what this 48-year-old man is typing,
then I reckon it started with a toy car.
There is something binary about the way young people
respond to the form of a motor car, whether it’s on televi-
sion, in the raw or a scale model. Children point and whoop
at exciting-looking machinery because they are uninhibited
by the societal baggage that the motor car carries for many
adults in 2023. Nothing makes me smile inside more than
seeing a kid want to stop and ogle at a low-slung slice of Ital-
ian machinery, as their appalled parent tries to drag them
away while delivering a sermon on the evils of the motor car.
What a sad, joyless life they must lead. I bet they didn’t love
toy cars when they were young.
I still have the box of toy cars that was the centre of my
universe at around the time my first memories began to form.
They are quite unremarkable and show no signs of having
been curated to satisfy an enthusiasm for any particular type
or shape. They are also in terrible condition, which must
confirm that behavioural traits manifest themselves early in
life because I still don’t look after my things – especially motor
cars. In fact, I take impish satisfaction in knowing that those
around me are appalled by how dirty and unloved my motor
cars look. Mechanically, they are fit as a whippet, but the
aesthetic has never interested me in the least. There are events
for people who polish cars – actual celebrations of people who
have specific methods of washing and polishing cars, and they
award each other medals and money for the static preparation
of an object designed to move. How perverse is that? The only
beautiful static car is one that has just been driven hard and is
caked in the dirt and insects that describe the journey it just
completed. Better still, a racing car that has just won, not been
washed and parked in a museum. That I can understand. But
not polishing for the sake of polishing.
But those early toy cars were so precious. If you’re a car
person – and I have to assume that if you’re reading this,
you are – you might have reflected on your formative years
and drawn the same conclusion. And that is this: the level of
protection and obsession you felt towards those little Major-
ette and Corgi toys was a brief prologue to your later life.
It certainly was for me. I don’t have a very good memory
(which isn’t ideal for the purposes of writing a book) but I
do remember things that involved cars, so my fi rst memory
does just that.
It involves my late mother and a beach, and a bucket of
toy cars. She told me many years ago that she left me play-
ing with them and when the time came to pack up and head
back, there was a problem. I’d buried the cars but couldn’t
quite remember where. This bit I don’t remember at all, nor
the next scene which involved my poor mother digging up a
large section of beach looking – and failing – to find four tiny,
dented lumps of metal that could easily be replaced. Parents
really are wonderful, patient things.
The part I do remember is the aftermath, the feeling of
utter desolation in the hotel room because my precious friends
(because that’s what they were, they weren’t just inanimate
objects – we had adventures together) had gone. They were
the pals from the fantasy life so many kids hide in because
they have no siblings, or maybe just retreat to because it’s
safe and fun. Now that I make television I have a therapist,
because it’s part of the uniform. When we discussed bereave-
ment, I told him my fi rst experience of emotional loss was
my grandmother on my mother’s side. But it wasn’t at all – it
was those toy cars. I was desperately sad to lose them because
they mattered to me on so many levels. I must have tried not
to cry but probably did weep buckets. I was a terrible crier as
a child and have become a terrible non-crier as an adult. The
irony is that I wasn’t remotely upset when that grandmother
passed away. She was a hideous old boot and not a patch on a
Majorette Renault 14.

Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter One: Toy Cars 1
Chapter Two: What Car? April 1982 11
Chapter Three: School Run 17
Chapter Four: Car Telly 23
Chapter Five: Mum 33
Chapter Six: Dad 43
Chapter Seven: Car Magazine 53
Chapter Eight: Renault 21 Savanna 61
Chapter Nine: Learning to Drive 67
Chapter Ten: New Driver 75
Chapter Eleven: University (Polytechnic) 85
Chapter Twelve: Work Experience 97
Chapter Thirteen: First Day at Work 109
Chapter Fourteen: First Day at Work (Again) 121
Chapter Fifteen: My First Porsche 133
Chapter Sixteen: The Best Years of My Working Life 143
Chapter Seventeen: Drivers Republic 155
Chapter Eighteen: Evo and Beyond 165
Chapter Nineteen: DRIVE 177
Chapter Twenty: Listless 191
Chapter Twenty-One: Fork in the Road 203
Chapter Twenty-Two: TG1 215
Chapter Twenty-Three: TG2 227
Afterword: The Future 239
Index 243