“Modern cars have lost their soul”: Jeremy Clarkson slams electric vehicles and pointless tech

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• The touchscreen takeover: when driving loses its charm
• Safety tech: help or hindrance?
• Electric vehicles: silent but soulless?
• Nostalgia and the case for sticking with old wheels

Has the automobile lost its mojo? For Jeremy Clarkson, the answer is loud, clear, and sprinkled with typical British withering: today’s cars are bland, tech-laden blobs, stripped of glamour, speed, and that irresistible whiff of danger. As he explained in a lively chat with fellow auto aficionado Harry Metcalfe on Harry’s Garage, Clarkson finds that new cars increasingly leave him yawning—and occasionally shouting at touchscreens.

The touchscreen takeover: when driving loses its charm

Clarkson—best known as the former face of Top Gear and The Grand Tour, and currently ruling the fields on Clarkson’s Farm—pulls no punches when discussing the state of modern motoring. For him, cars have lost their soul. Where there was once glam, excitement, and character, there are now, as he mockingly puts it, only “shapeless blobs.” And the primary culprit? The rise of the touchscreen.

He is particularly irked by the flood of configurable options in new models. Comparing the settings menu in a recent BMW M5 to a ’70s graphic equalizer, he grumbles about endless fiddling that ultimately leads nowhere. In a right-hand drive car, he’s forced to clumsily navigate menus with his left hand, which, predictably, goes badly more often than not. The result?

• Wrong menus
• Smudged screens
• A deep sense of frustration

“The reason I’m still driving an 18-year-old Range Rover and a 12-year-old Jaguar is simple: they have buttons. You just press them, no fuss,” Clarkson declares.

Safety tech: help or hindrance?

Touchscreens aren’t Clarkson’s only automotive bete noire. He also blames compulsory safety technology for sucking the fun out of driving. According to him, governments are responsible for a deluge of warning bells, lane assist features, and intrusive assistants. Each time he steps into a different car (which, as a car journalist, is practically every week), he must perform a ritual of disabling lane keep assist and speed limit alerts—digging through menus for what feels like an eternity. “For someone like me, who drives a different car every week, it takes ten minutes in the menus. It drives me insane,” he admits.

Electric vehicles: silent but soulless?

Clarkson has a soft spot for Jaguar—a brand he recalls testing to its very limits. He once took an F-Type across the Sahara for The Grand Tour, fully expecting it would disintegrate in the desert. Instead, the Jaguar survived, earning from him the label “indestructible.” Yet even he understands why Jaguar, barely selling F-Types or XJs, went electric in its quest for survival. That said, he found their “ad campaign without an actual car” odd, but concedes that the idea makes sense, especially because, as he says, there’s a massive audience for electric Jaguars in America. For himself, though? “I’ll never buy it, but I get why they do it.”

And this brings us to his core complaint: electric cars themselves. Clarkson simply can’t get excited about them. “How am I supposed to enjoy a drive when that damned thing makes no sound?” he complains. There was one slight exception: the new electric Renault 5, which he praised for its playful design and bright yellow interior accents. But ultimately, it lost him at the same hurdle: “If only it had an engine.”

Nostalgia and the case for sticking with old wheels

For Clarkson, the peak of automotive excellence isn’t in some futuristic concept—it’s well and truly in the rearview mirror. He singles out a golden age: a time when cars offered everything you could reasonably want, from air conditioning and navigation to roofs that slickly folded away on the move. They were comfortable, fast, efficient, and dependable. “About ten years ago, we hit that sweet spot. Then, things just got more electronic and ridiculous.”

So what does a self-confessed car nut do? Stick with what works. Clarkson still pilots his trusty Jaguar F-Type daily—secondhand, snapped up for twenty thousand pounds, and, ventilator creaks aside, still going strong. “I’m 65. Why would I sell it? It works, and I simply have no need for a new car.”

Clarkson’s views are unmistakably his: outspoken, sharp-tongued, sometimes downright provocative. Yet beneath the bluster, he’s striking a chord with petrolheads who share his distaste for unnecessary electronics and soulless silent EVs. Whether you’re nostalgic for vroom-vroom days or eager for digital dashboards, it’s clear Clarkson will remain one of the loudest voices in the ongoing debate about the future of the automobile.