That’s an interesting question. Like most people I have a preference for a car type, but favourite depends on budget. No one would drive a Kia if they could afford a Jaguar and very few people would prefer a Hyundai to a BMW and those who say they do are waiting for little men in white coats to come.
No, the question really should be: What kind of car would I like for… and then a range of options like off roading, open top touring, long distance driving, city hopping, inner city shopping etc. I am here to tell you that no car will do all of these jobs well. This is why people with more dollars than cents have a car for every occasion. Other like classic cars, but as the past owner of classic cars I can tell you that classic car owners usually give up much to ride their old but trust steeds.
No amount of money would tempt me into a “super car”. They should be reserved for those who play football and 20 year olds who made a fortune on a dotcom. They are not practical, and can be a handful on Australian roads which are little better than goat tracks. Some have potholes which have swallowed some of the smaller Hyundais, so a car with the ground clearance of a Hoover is not going to be easy to drive. In fact you might well do yourself a severe mischief. You may well rearrange several of your major organs while trying to negotiate you way to the local shops. The final nail in the coffin of the supercar is the degree of difficulty trying to get into the David Jones carpark will be.
Progressive governments have ignored our roads because they are essentially on a vast tax-payer funded ego-trip. They care not for the plight of the average person. They have chauffer driven cars so they can play on their iPads in the back seat and leave the pot hole-dodging to the long suffering driver.
What about a convertible? Even Bear Grylls goes quite limp in our baking summers. Only a complete fool would venture out with the roof down in the height of summer. Apart from sweating your tits off, you run the risk of dying instantly in abject pain from a million skin cancers. No, our summers are not the place to drive topless, only tourists would contemplate such madness. The ideals of halcyon days spent frolicking on sun kissed beaches, playfully splashing handfuls of artistically displayed sea water are just that, an ideal. More importantly, do you really want to track a few hundred kilos of sand onto expensive carpet? Do you want the combination of water and sunscreen ruining your tasteful-without-being-gaudy upholstery wit? I very much doubt it. We hired a convertible Mini for a fun weekend once. We had the Peugeot 308CC and drove in tandem along some of the best roads in the country. With the roof down you could see how the paint on the rent-a-car was utterly destroyed from a relatively few morons jumping in and smearing the top 10 centimetres below the window line with factor 30. Factor 30 is good on your skin but has dire consequences for a car’s paintjob. It fades it rather badly and this particular Mini looked as if it had been vandalised by a drunken mob of football yobbos. instead of being enjoyed by careless teenagers and fat middle-aged men having their mid-life crisis.
Would I buy an SUV? Not on your life. Unless I am driving off-road, I will not don a silly hat and an even sillier attitude and think that I can man-handle a couple of tonnes of buggery ugly pig-iron around a shopping centre car park. Why 5 foot tall females in their Paris Hilton sunglasses think they can do it is quite beyond me. They all should be stewed slowly in their own juices for parking across fifteen parking spaces and double parking outside school zones. They should be slapped for travelling down the centre line of the road and abused for taking a wide turn every time they go round a corner. SUV’s do not belong in town, they should be set free where they have room to roam and more importantly where the idiot people who drive them can’t inflict them on the rest of the unsuspecting community.
What about one of those hideously expensive sports saloons with the engines the size of the moon that drinks like drag queens? They are enormous fun. The rip your face off, slap you around the chops then kick you up the bum and cost you the GDP of a small African nation every time you fill it, but there is something primal and base about speed and power. The rhythmic throb of something massive only centimetres away almost dares you to take it by the scruff of the neck, before it takes you by the scruff of your neck and throws you against the wall and does something unnatural to you. It’s you and it, the car and the man, the beast and the master, but which is which? If worse comes to worst then you can drive it like a nanna and ferry your mates around from bar to bar because you have lost your license from an accumulation of a million speeding fines. You are somewhere buoyed by the fact that you convinced the judge that you would certainly die without being able work, and you needed to drive to work. Or, as one friend of mines aid to a judge, “I’m far too important to lose my license and besides I have been threatened, I live in an isolated area and here is the AVO to prove it”. Would you believe she flashed her very expensive boobjob at the judge and was let off? For the rest of us, we would be sent to a remote island to serve 5 lifetimes in painful servitude then come home to our possessions having been abandoned at the roadside.
Then we come to city cars. I am far to old to type this but OMG what utter pieces of garbage. The merest hint of a crash and they fold in sympathy. They have the power of 2 randy hamsters that are just a bit hanged from being worked to death and brakes that are no more efficient than an old tin car and a couple of primary school-style erasers. They have the space of a medium sized sardine can and the allure of scabies. Even the ridiculous Aston Martin Cygnet at $55,000 counts for naught because it is just a miserable Toyota IQ that costs ¼ of the price. The only city car that comes even close to slightly bearable is the Mercedes Benz Smart. Cute, compact and well made. Would I have one? I wouldn’t drive a car that can be stolen in someone’s handbag.
An electric car? Seriously?
I’m not rich enough to have the J kay’s multi car garage fetish, so the one car space would be filled with,
drum roll please,
the BMW 335i M sport convertible. TA DAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The folding steel roof makes this car all things to all people. Keep the piece of origami folding steel up all summer and hey presto you have a coupe. It has the added advantage of an uncomfortable back seat so the hangers-on won’t be tempted to make a regular meal of your largess.
But it’s not Gay Car Of The Year.
Till next time campers…….
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