England vs Sweden: TG's World Cup prediction

The World Cup of Football continues apace on Saturday, as England take on Sweden in the most eagerly anticipated Anglo-Scandinavian clash since the big Lindesfarne showdown (793AD, 1,225 years of hurt).

And following the frankly stellar success of our Big World Cup Of Cars, Top Gear thought it would have a shot at predicting the outcome… through the medium of automotive indicators. Not indicators as in the clicky stalk thingies that tell people which way you’re turning, but indicators as in statistical comparisons of… look basically what we’re saying is that we Googled some facts about England and Swedish cars, and attempted to squeeze them into a broadly unsuccessful football framework.

But hey, if octopuses and cats and pigs and camels are allowed to have a shot at World Cup predictions, why can’t we?

Easy win for the boys in white here, we thought. England, after all, is home to some of the biggest names in the world of going-fast-while-wearing-a-licence-plate. Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin, and of course McLaren, who still hold the record for the fastest British production car in the shape of the 240mph F1. Unless we’ve forgotten something newer and faster, which is entirely possible.

But the other thing we’d forgotten was… Koenigsegg. Which is, indisputably, Swedish. And is also, mostly indisputably, the builder of the fastest production car on the planet right now, the 278mph Agera RS. And, much as we’d like to claim otherwise, 278mph is fractionally – fractionally – faster than 240mph.

Conclusion: if Sweden line up with an Agera RS up front on Saturday, best not play a high back line, Gareth.

Score: England 0 – 1 Sweden

Right, forget about that silly subjective ‘top speed’ nonsense. Time for a proper serious comparison: which nation builds the most cars each year?

And the answer is… us. If you’re English, that is. Otherwise the answer is… them. Because, in 2017, the UK cooked up a stonking 1.7 million cars, over seven times as many as Sweden’s paltry 226,000 in the same period.

And OK, that 1.7 million will include contributions from the fine parts of the United Kingdom that aren’t England (quite where, we can’t think at present, but please let us know below) but even so, it’s a stonking reply for the boys in white. Or possibly red. It’s very hard to keep up with all these football kits nowadays.

And let’s not forget the vast majority of those Swedish cars were Volvos, a company belonging to Chinese firm Geely. Quite unlike England’s home-owned brands like, um, Bentley. And Rolls-Royce. And Jaguar. And let’s just move on to the next slide OK?

Score: England 1 – 1 Sweden

What do you mean, cherry picking the categories to benefit England? How dare you? This is a tried-and-tested formula for determining national superiority. Just like baseball’s World Series.

So yes, it’s another point (Goal? Touchdown?) for the lads from the west of the North Sea. Because British drivers have, over the years, racked up no fewer than 17 F1 drivers’ championships between them.

And again, we’ll play fair and knock a few off the list, as John Surtees and Jackie Stewart (four championships between them) were Scottish, and we apologise if we’ve forgotten Lewis Hamilton is secretly Welsh. But even so, it’s a bunch more F1 champs than Sweden’s managed: a big fat zero. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Pontus Jansson!

(We retract our final comment. We’ve just Googled Pontus Jansson and he looks hard as nails. Best of luck on Saturday, big man.)

Score: England 2 – 1 Sweden

We’ll be honest, we thought this was – to use the footballing terminology – another home run for England, with its wild, heady 70mph motorway limits. Sweden, as we all know, is notorious for its strict – and strictly-enforced – speed limits, a country with a zero-tolerance approach to enthusiastic driving on the public road.

How wrong we were.

Because it turns out – and this, we suspect, will come as no surprise to actual Swedes – there are sections of the Swedish motorway network where you can do 120kmh, the equivalent of 75mph. Damn you, Sweden, with your common sense attitude to speed! A sneaky goal at the last!

Score: England 2 – 2 Sweden

Yeah, it’s going to penalties, isn’t it?