Exiles on Main Street

By Jason Barlow | Photography by Anton Watts

Dwarves, lesbians and brain-scrambling identity confusion: that's what Mulholland Drive meant to David Lynch, cinema's greatest contemporary dream-weaver. His 2001 film of the same name is a surrealist Tinseltown fable — crazy, sexy, complex. You get a panoramic view of Los Angeles from up here on Mulholland, and it's clear that all human life is up to all sorts of things down there. No wonder Lynch loves the place.

Luckily, our mission is less oblique. While L.A. shimmers in the distance, the foreground stars are familiar enough, mostly sedan car, shapes. BMW, Cadillac, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz. Not much vaporous mystery there. Between them, these guys have produced some of the best cars of the 20th century, and a handful of borderline 21st-century classics, too. Except that, like the misfits and psychos in David Lynch's films, there's way more to this lot than meets the eye.

Power, mainly. In excess of 2,000 hp, in fact, which is an incredible amount for cars of any shape to summon up between them, never mind four cars that have four doors, a boot and riff off the most controversial silhouette in the business. The last time I came to California on a big road trip, we had four full-on late-'90s supercars, two of them were mid-engined, one was packing an 8.0-liter V10 and none were anywhere near as powerful as the least powerful car we have here tonight. These days, you need 500 hp just to get in through the door. Forty years after the muscle car first appeared, we've brought the best modern versions back to their spiritual home.

And there's a plan. A fairly freestyle plan, in the best Top Gear tradition, but a plan nonetheless. The TG crew — Mikey, the editorial director, Charlie, the creative director, Pat, TG's West Coast correspondent, Anton the photographer and Anton's laconic assistant, Larry — have all gone native at a NASCAR race at Vegas Speedway, topped off with a red-eyed nocturnal blast back to L.A. I've just arrived from London to document the next phase: a 1,000-mile thunder north toward San Francisco. I don't know whether to write about it or ask Metallica to record a commemorative concept album.

Mind you, there's definitely a fin de siècle feel to things. Just as the last big energy crisis shut down the original muscle cars in 1973, so our four cars — a Mercedes-Benz CLS63 AMG, a Cadillac CTS-V, a BMW M5, and a Jaguar XFR — are as highly evolved as the legislature mandarins are likely to allow. Later on this week, we'll meet a man who pointedly describes President Obama as a "socialist," and I narrowly avoid a fight when I laugh in his face at the idea. But maybe he was on to something. With the U.S. government's bailout of the mortally wounded car industry saddled with all sorts of environmental caveats, and with Governator Arnie's Hummer running on hydrogen, a 500-hp mega sedan shootout suddenly sounds like the end of something rather than the start. It'll be a Tesla and a Fisker next time out, so it's time to party like it's, er, 2009.

With the jet lag nudging me further into the Lynch zone, the sheer, daft spectacle of the CLS cuts through me like a blade. Its engine sounds astonishing, its throaty throttle blips on the downshifts as unrepentantly masculine as Lemmy after an evening spent guzzling the rock 'n' roll mouthwash. And even with the promise of a good night's sleep trashed by a rutting couple next door (helpfully amplified by the hotel's balsa wood walls but, hey, this is L.A.), tomorrow can't come soon enough.

Sunset Strip should love cars like these. You can imagine some coke-fueled Hollywood executive in one of these, barking into his cellphone at an underling while being blown by an aspiring young starlet and slicing impatiently through traffic. (By the way, have you seen Tom Cruise in "Tropic Thunder"? Rent or buy that film immediately...)

Then again, there's more to them than that. The BMW M5 has always been the real deal, but — is it just me, or does it suddenly look a bit tired? The now-departed Chris Bangle has proven to be a powerful influence in car design, but while he's undoubtedly a great designer and a persuasive creative force, I'm still not sure how much he actually loves cars. The M5's an intellectual piece of product design, but actually a sterile-looking car. For an automotive designer, Bangle would make a great architect.

Everyone loves the CLS, particularly in Darth Vader black, 6.3-liter, 507-hp AMG 63 guise. I have to admit, I got this thing spectacularly wrong when it appeared at the back end of 2004. What looked like yet another example of Merc detonating its hard-won engineering integrity in pursuit of a potentially comical niche actually turned out to be right on the money.

Not least for Jaguar's Ian Callum, for whom a four-door, four-seater with a rakish profile isn't just desirable, it's the Holy Grail. His old boss insisted on shoving a few extra inches back into the XF's roofline, so it's not quite as svelte as it should be. Nor is the XFR — with its gaping maw and Halfords sill extensions — 100 percent right. But there's still a command of detail here that's a cut above the others, as well as a very seductive subtlety. Four days on the road with it will confirm whether this is enough to promote the sort of deep-rooted desire Jaguar needs us all — Americans, especially — to feel.

As for the Cadillac... Can I come back to it later, please? For now, well, it has 550 hp. That'll do for starters.

We fuel up. Even a task this mundane has a cultural resonance in L.A. Something to do with the way you can lock off the nozzle, then go in search of beef jerky. Oh, and the absurd, unsustainable price of gas. The recent oil spike has clearly subsided, and though the U.S. had a brief taste of things to come, normal service has now resumed. The XFR only needs half its tank replenished, and the pump shuts off with a mere $13 on the display. In other words, roughly $30 is all that's needed to fill this supercharged 503-hp super sedan's 60-liter tank. That's seriously cheap energy. If Obama really wants to test his "socialist" credentials and reduce America's willfully gluttonous energy consumption, then imagine what a 65 percent tax levy on every liter of gas would do...

Inside the XFR is a great place to be. Getting out of rush-hour L.A. in a four-car convoy requires a degree of concentration, and the logic of the Jaguar's controls is a major asset. In fact, this is arguably the best cabin in the game right now. It's so soothing, it all but pours you a G&T and asks after your well being — and like it really means it.

Of course, this is the New Jaguar, as the ads proclaim, so the old gin and Jag thing is practically profane. Better to point out that no car currently on sale corrals all the latest high-tech more intuitively than the XF. The touch-screen telematics are easy to use, there's no need to plunge into a distant sub-menu when all you want is cold air on your face, and the silvery gear selector is a neat twist on the usual setup, though its haptic qualities could be better resolved.

So, as the guitar shops and fleshpots of Sunset give way to the 101 North toward Pasadena, the XFR is impressing. Around town, you simply wouldn't know it was packing 503 hp; like all the new generation Jags, it moves with an effortless precision. Its low-speed ride is unruffled, despite those big tires and 20-inch wheels, and everything — over-light steering included — feels very professionally calibrated. And quiet. But the moment I hit the on ramp to the 101 and introduce the throttle pedal to the carpet, we don't so much join the traffic as teleport into the middle of it like the last five seconds simply haven't happened. The XFR is one of those cars that's a different order of fast. Anything that weighs 4,160 pounds is going to shift with a kind of deliberate, meaty quality, no matter how powerful it is. But even so, the XFR takes off like the proverbial scalded cat.

Apparently it'll demolish the 50–70 mph increment in 1.9 secs, which is SLR McLaren quick. Its personality might be as smoothly upholstered as its interior, but this is a rampant car. Which of course means that a certain amount of juvenile behavior creeps in. I can't resist hanging back and letting the other three disappear before dropping the hammer and reeling them in like I'm armed with a big, metal kinetic fishing rod. It's a hell of a party trick. Even at full tilt, it's always refined: its Eaton twin-vortex supercharger has four lobes per rotor, rather than three, which takes the customary 'charger whine pretty much out of the equation. It's not totally silent in here, though; the XFR is swear-out-loud fast.

And the flipside is pretty good, too. Among its many distinctions, America is the land that gave us the cupholder, and the Jaguar has lots of them. They're filling up very quickly — junk doesn't just accumulate on a big road trip, it reproduces — and the XFR's are XL. There's no point designing a car with the interior ambiance of a fashionable vodka bar if you have to store your iPhone in your mouth while you're driving. On which note, the Jag's magnificent Bowers & Wilkins sound system lets you hook iPhones or iPods directly up to the car and is so good that even compressed MP3 files acquire the amplified thump of the Hollywood Bowl. Like I said, this is a great place to be.

It takes an eon to break free of Los Angeles. Southern California is the place that really defined suburban sprawl: The malls, prefab estates, low-rise industrial units — including one now sadly shuttered Lamborghini dealership in Calabasas — stretch out for mile after mile. This is Bill and Ted country, where the sunshine and pot neuter the urge to go on a homicidal rampage.

Two hours outside L.A. one finds Santa Barbara. Lots of wealthy entertainment types — including Steven Spielberg, John Cleese and, somewhat bizarrely, Depeche Mode's Dagenham-born Martin Gore — live around here, and it's easy to see why. The sunshine is just that little bit more luminous; your lungs swell with coastal air that's much purer than L.A.'s notoriously smoggy stuff. Santa Barbara is what happens when you buff the spiky edges off L.A.'s beach areas. Even the skate park is immaculate. Trouble is, it's so nice it feels like the whole place is on Prozac.

The Cadillac CTS-V is a pretty raw way to get out of town. The mouthy counterpoint to the super stealthy XFR, it's been leering at me in my rearview mirror for miles now, as lantern-jawed as Desperate Dan with a supercharger shoved up his arse. Midway between a BMW 3 and 5 Series, size-wise, it kicks them both into touch in terms of sheer presence. This isn't an entirely good thing, because while the Caddy's obsidian features are indisputably very now, I'm not sure where it'll be next month. Or next year.

A colossally powerful 6.2-liter V8 means that I know where I'm going to be in 39 seconds, though: doing 60 mph. If the XFR's step-off is manic, the CTS-V should be sectioned. This is one of those cars that you don't drive, so much as try to hang on to. OK, so some of the stuff under the bonnet — two pushrod-operated valves per cylinder, for example — is more hardware than software, but elsewhere the Caddy is really trying. It has magnetic dampers. The chassis' electronics give you a decent range of options and the steering is pretty good. And remember, this thing can apparently dispatch the Nordschleife in 7 minutes, 59 seconds. That's properly impressive.

Inside, there are beefy, multi-adjustable Recaro seats, Alcantara is generously festooned about the place and the interior is apparently trimmed and stitched by the same people responsible for the Bugatti Veyron. Its dash architecture reminds me of something Picasso might have knocked out during his Cubist period, which really isn't much of a compliment. But the CTS's touch screen hides cleverly out of view if you want it to. And not only is the sat-nav terrifically accurate, but it gives you a three-day weather forecast. There's an excellent satellite radio–equipped sound system, too, so you're never far away from a rock classic.

Do we like the Caddy? It's too early to say. As we leave Los Olivos (we have lunch in a restaurant featured in every oenophile's favorite film, "Sideways," which is appropriate for entirely different reasons...), I try to initiate a swap.

"Want to drive the Caddy, Mikey?"

"Not especially," he replies tartly, before settling back into the CLS, which his inner aesthete is clearly bonding with. Pat, meanwhile, comes up with a brilliant analogy.

"The CTS-V's power delivery is like standing on a dinosaur's tail. There's a noticeable pause before anything happens, but all hell breaks loose when it does." Then he gets into the BMW.

Given this sudden outbreak of indifference, I stay in the Caddy. My God, it's fast. It's fast in the way the XFR isn't, which is to say, riotously, almost obnoxiously fast. But a big key to the success, or otherwise, of cars like this is their duality — their ability to turn the fireworks on or off at will. Despite its rather brutal character, the Caddy will cruise quite unobtrusively, and it rides poor surfaces and freeway expansion joints competently. I'm really beginning to warm to it.

We stop again at the (in)famous Madonna Inn, in San Luis Obispo. Opened in 1958 by Alex Madonna and apparently built using the rock left over from the construction of the 101, each of its 109 rooms is differently and hideously themed. Post-modernist writer Umberto Eco didn't like it much. "Let's just say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an over-generous amount of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli," he wrote. Which makes it sound better than it is, although there's a urinal disguised as a waterfall, so it's not all bad.

While he was visiting Chicago, Oscar Wilde was asked why he thought America was such a violent country: "It's perfectly obvious. It's because your wallpaper is so ugly." History doesn't record whether he ever made it to the Pacific Coast Highway (or, PCH), but Wildean irony is impossible here. This is one of the world's greatest roads, carved out of some of the greatest scenery.

Highway 1, as it's also known, takes a while to properly unfold — the seal colony near San Simeon is where it kicks up a gear — but once it does, it's truly breathtaking. For now, though, the blue skies have been replaced by surly looking storm clouds, and pretty soon the rain is heaving down in a most un-California way. Another test for our quartet's duality: How many 500-hp-plus cars would you really want to hurl along a road like this in torrential rain?

I'm in the BMW now. This being a U.S.-spec car, the major shock in here is the six-speed "stick-shift," upon which the American market quixotically insisted. It's odd, given BMW's prowess in the area, and a manual M5 just doesn't feel right at all. (Mind you, Europe's SMG alternative is old-hat now, too, eclipsed by Porsche's PDK, Audi's DSG, BMW's own DCT system and, more tellingly, the Jaguar's regular and awesomely smooth ZF torque converter.)

In fact, the M5 is a reverse revelation: It's a car I've always loved, yet I can't get into a groove with it as Highway 1's fast-flowing roads become ever tighter and more technical. It's 134 pounds lighter than the XFR, but it feels much clumsier and needs considerably more effort to drive smoothly. It's barely five years since this V10 powerhouse arrived, yet it feels disconnected and disengaged. Pat has already observed that it's a car that should come with a course of anger management lessons. I know what he means.

Aside from its bulk, the main problem is that mighty engine. All the action is at the top end, and on this sort of road that means sitting in a screamingly uncomfortable second gear until your eardrums explode. The XFR, on the other hand, is in its element; its perfectly calibrated automatic — with paddleshift — loops it all together so accurately and swiftly it's like Scarlett Johansson is whispering sweet nothings in your ear, while F1 driver Stefan Johansson takes the wheel.

Compare the numbers: The Jag produces 461 lb-ft of torque from 2,500 through 5,500 rpm, right where you need it. The BMW gets 383 lb-ft at 6,100 rpm, where you don't. The BMW remains a totally awesome machine, but not one of us has fallen under its spell. In fact, more than one of us actively dislikes it...

Meanwhile, up ahead the love story between the editorial director and the AMG Mercedes CLS63 continues to unfold. Mikey is a sucker for sexy product, and there's no doubt the CLS is a very sexy motor car. It may well be dynamically edged out by the XFR, but this is still the one you'd want to turn up to the big party in, the one most likely to get you — let's not be coy — laid. In the XFR, the entertainment is primarily aimed at the driver. The CLS is more interested in playing to the crowd.

And it has the chops to back it up. While I suspect that the incredible 6.3-liter normally aspirated engine is smarter than the seven-speed transmission it's hooked up to — and the now aging chassis — it's still bloody good fun. It's accomplished rather than especially agile. Mercedes has been making fast cars longer than most, and it shows. When the CLS leads the convoy over the PCH's jaw-dropping Bixby Bridge, it almost holds its own with this amazing feat of engineering.

Then it happens. Mikey's about 30 feet in front of me in the Merc, carving his way through another sweeping corner, when a massive lump of rock suddenly detaches itself from the mountainside and smashes into the front of the car. In an instant there are bits of bodywork and fragments of boulder all over the place, and I have to slalom round the debris. The CLS skitters to a halt in a lay-by, and Mikey, Anton and laconic Larry stumble out of it, bewildered. It's a sobering moment: a second later, and the rock would have gone straight through the windscreen. As it is, the front bumper has been comprehensively face-lifted, and the rock has punched a huge hole under the passengerside front headlight. Part of the radiator has been shunted back and there are gouges in the hood and windshield.

It's a mess. But despite this act of geological GBH, amazingly the car feels absolutely fine. We check it over and tape it up at a quirky place called Gorda Springs, just south of the stunning Big Sur, then head for an overnight in Monterey. The whole coastline is now shrouded in a spooky twilight mist. Riders on the Storm is on the radio. Weirdly, we all seem to like the Merc even more for the fact that a) no one got hurt and b) it's just shrugged off a rock strike. This is a party car with integrity.

With pictures to shoot and an appointment at Pebble Beach (indescribably wealthy, great golf course, big car show, looks a bit like the poshest parts of Northern Ireland strangely enough, with better weather), it's 3pm the next day before we hit the road again. We stop off at Laguna Seca, a picturesque track with the most amazing changes of elevation, and in the shape of the infamous Corkscrew, possibly the best corner in the world. There's a race school going, so we can't take our cars onto the track itself, but there's little doubt in my mind the Jaguar would fare best. Excess mass is what usually kills a car's chances on a circuit, and though the XFR is a two-ton car with a big adult onboard (it's much porkier than the bigger XJ), it's also the car that best disguises its weight.

A long but really quite incredible detour along the Carmel Valley road is the final proof. California distills a whole planet's worth of scenery into one state, and barely two hours from the PCH's Pacific surf (and falling rocks), we're deep in a Tolkienesque forest. On either side of it are rolling hills, with farms and farmland seemingly straight out of central casting. (America really does play like one big movie.)

For the next hour, we drive hard along what is categorically one of the world's best roads. It has the lot: endless, unpredictable changes of surface; vicious off-camber sections; long, flowing bits punctuated by traction-defying hairpins and off-set by a weirdly bucolic atmosphere. All this in the middle of nowhere, which means that, with the exception of one woman in a 20-year-old Merc 560 SEL, we have it to ourselves.

With Anton and Charlie being arty somewhere in the Cadillac, it's Pat in the BMW, Mikey in the Merc and me at the back in the XFR. And, boy, does it love this road. The Jaguar inspires so much confidence that I disable the DSC and go for it (you have to hold the button down for a full 10 seconds, so this is a very deliberate process).

Even with the risk factor cranked up, it's clear I'm working much less frenetically than the other two. The XFR is supple and simply shrugs off the camber and surface changes in a way that the CLS visibly can't. Yet its body control is terrifically contained, too, so you can place it wherever you want with absolute confidence. Its e-diff and continuously variable adaptive damping are a fearsome partnership. With so much power, it oversteers readily, too, but without putting the fear of God into you. The Jaguar is so good at this stuff, it's almost casual about it. It's an easy car to drive quickly, and flamboyantly. Two other points: This is the first fast Jag that'll let you do ridiculous burnouts. More usefully, it's also the first fast Jag I've driven in a while with brakes that don't fade noticeably after a committed drive.

When we stop, after a good 45 minutes, my heart rate is up, but my palms are dry. The other two clearly haven't had quite such a good time. "That's the sort of road that leaves the Merc feeling exposed," says Mikey. Pat just swears for a bit. Somebody book the anger management lessons, please.

Back on the 101, we head north, past the San Francisco Bay Area and Oakland — a major port and the area's tough-looking industrial hinterland — and into Sonoma. It's wine country, predominantly, but it's also home to the Infineon Raceway, where we're due to hook up with a group of original Trans-Am racers. These things make our cars look like a bunch of weedy Korean subcompacts, and don't start so much as genuinely explode into life. (I watch as the side-exit exhaust on one of them sends ripples across a puddle, calling to mind the moment the T. rex first approaches in "Jurassic Park." But those Trans-Ams are another story.

We'll finish up in San Francisco, but after two days of driving, the cars have arrived at a natural hierarchy. Manufacturer optimism and driver enthusiasm means that none has gotten anywhere near the quoted fuel economy figures. The XFR has done no better than 15 mpg (Jag claims a combined figure of 23), and occasionally a lot worse, while the others are all hovering around 14 to 15 mpg. Even in a country where fuel is cheaper than Coca-Cola, this is a sobering thought.

But not the right one to end this story on. The Caddy's good. Not just because it goes like a rocket with a rocket up its arse and handles pretty well, but because it suits this environment. It's useful. I doubt it would feel quite as useable on the B660, or even the M25, and it's a bit crass in places. But we like it.

We don't all like the BMW. One of the TG crew does a single stint in the M5 then refuses to go near it after that. A bit harsh, and possibly even a bit spoiled, but not that spoiled, funnily enough. It's an odd sort of car, this. One that makes you work too hard to squeeze the best out of it. It only delivers if you drive it like a bastard everywhere, and that's a bit tiresome. The next M5 will apparently have a twin-turbo V8, which suggests that even BMW doesn't believe a thirsty, high-revving V10 is the answer any more. With its Dynamic Drive and EDC and "M" button and silly active seat ventilation, the M5 offers the driver a dizzying array of modes and options. The trouble is, none of them are quite right.

The Jaguar XFR is much better optimized. It's an amazingly well-sorted car, a hushed motorway cruiser with an unbelievable fire in its belly. It has the duality thing absolutely nailed, and it's the best all-rounder by some margin. Though a little more visual distinction wouldn't be amiss.

It's also $15,000 less than the CLS63 (before options), which pretty much seals the deal. Yet the Mercedes is the one that lured us all in, the one that parked itself in the TG dream garage. It's fast, looks great and it makes you feel fantastic. Simple as that, really. On this particular crazy trip, it was the real rock star.