Cars

I love cars, I really do. Some people will disagree, but to me they're among the few man-made things that have a soul, much like guitars or those robotic dogs that were so good they were going to replace actual dogs back in 1996. Oh, and Tamagotchis.

Forrest Gump's momma used to say you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes; where they going, where they been. But I reckon that if she hadn't died on a Tuesday and stuck around to see the development of the automobile, she'd have used cars as a learning simile for little Forrest. See, cars are the best way for anybody to pretend to be something they're not, and I know this because I've done it.

A couple of years back I used to 'work' for a market research company. It's a long story, but for a short while they gave me a Saab 93 Turbo as my company car which cost over £2,000 per year just to insure. The fact that I was given it solely because my boss wanted to buy a BMW but had just bought a Saab which he consequently needed to hastily get rid of it was neither here nor there. The thing was, I was 23 and driving a car better than my dad, which was great. At the time I didn’t really think about the concept of doing stuff to earn money to buy flash cars, but then neither did my boss so I didn’t care.

Anyway, when I drove that car, in my daft little head I was better than everyone whose car had cost less than mine. The laughable stupidity of that notion hadn't struck me at the time, nor had the irony of the fact that obtaining such knowledge meant many hours spent flicking through the 'new car prices' section in What Car? memorising the recommended retail prices on all kinds of hatchbacks and family saloons. What a geek. Don't get me wrong, I never actually deliberately formulated thoughts of superiority towards other drivers, but that sense of 'my car (and therefore my life) is better than yours' was definitely in the back of my mind, and it made me feel good. Pathetic, isn't it?

But that thinking is all over our roads. Cars bring out a side of people that they'd (hopefully) be horrified with if they saw themselves from the outside. I see it in myself sometimes, and even though I know it's there I can't stop it. It's the thing that makes boy racers put exhausts with ever more inappropriate girth on their Citroen Saxos and makes middle aged men buy Subaru Imprezas - ego.

Somehow, your car is an alternative personality that you can buy and wrap yourself up in so that people can judge you based on that alone. The problem is, a car rarely says what you actually want it to say, it usually just says that you couldn't quite afford what you really wanted. German 'luxury hatchbacks' particularly allude to that.

In days gone by, if people wanted to better themselves they’d buy a book and read it. Or, they’d plant bigger daffodils in their front garden than the neighbours and wait as their superiority grew in bulbous yellow splendour. These days, people just get themselves down to ‘Colin’s Crazy Autotint’ for some black sticky-back-plastic to put on their windows, or they buy a box of transfers from www.blingblingtuningmadness.com to stick to the front wing. It doesn’t matter that you can’t string a coherent sentence together, as long as you’ve got the right brands transferred onto the side of your motor when you’re doing donuts in the Blockbuster car park.

There are very, very few cars that make people look cooler than they already are, or aren’t, as the case may be. Maybe it’s just because I’m a loser who pays too much attention, but there are loads of absolutely inexplicable things people do to their cars in desperate bids for attention. A good example is the fake badge. Consider the scenario; a young man purchases terrible old / underpowered car then spends three quid in ‘Kroozin’ or some other downmarket Halfords for a plastic badge that says ‘16v’ or ‘M Sport’ or whatever, under the pretence that this will enhance his credibility among other motorists and, more importantly, girls. This is all well and good, but if he stopped for even one moment to consider the folly of his logic, he could use the three quid to buy poppers or something instead.

You see, if you think about it, anybody who knows cars at all would know that the badge is fake, that the German mechanical gurus at BMW Motorsport DID NOT power his P-reg Corsa and that there certainly are not 16 valves under that plastic ‘carbon’ bonnet. So, to the discerning motorist, both car and driver become objects of sustained mockery and pity, their dignity stripped away for the sake of a few quid. Equally, anybody with no knowledge of cars, your average girl for example (oooh), would be absolutely none the wiser, again rendering the badges a complete waste of time and money. A lose / lose situation of ever there was one.

Unfortunately, though, manufacturers do it too, manifested in the ‘sport’ editions of their cars, and suckers like me fall for it every time. I’d love to be a car salesman for a few days just to be honest with people about what they’re actually buying:

“Excuse me kind salesman, why is this car much more expensive than that similar one over there?”

“Well, sir”, I’d say, “this one’s the ‘sport plus’ edition. It has the same wheezy little 1.4 engine and awful ride, but it has fake leather around the steering wheel, the alloy wheels are a full one inch bigger and it says ‘sport’ on the back. Now, that’s one and a half grand well spent if you ask me.”

Then I’d add, in true car salesman style, “plump for the ‘sport plus extreme max’ edition, however, and yourself will also get an inch of plastic glued to the boot to increase aerodynamic efficiency, which stops the car leaving the ground under aggressive acceleration, sir.”

Yet I’d buy that car, the extreme one, even though I know I’m being ripped off, and I’d do it because it’s at least an inch better than my neighbour’s version of the same car. Let’s not go the there, though.

But what happens when all the options in the world just won’t do? A trip to ‘New Reg’, perhaps? Nothing says 'I have style and sophistication’ better than a personal number plate, especially one that looks like it might spell something that’s almost approaching either your name, or better yet, the name of your car. If a 911 just won’t do, a 911 with the plate ‘PO02RCH’ surely will. Just in case you’re not sure what he’s driving, the number plate reveals all…He’s driving a porch. Obviously somebody with a slightly less relaxed brain had gone in for ‘PO02CHE’ first.

I suppose you have to give some people respect for trying to make their cars look a bit different, but car customisation is an art that so very few people get right. I can count on one hand the number of customised cars I’ve ever seen and thought ‘wow, that looks good.’ Usually, I wonder what on earth possessed that person to spend so much money making their mam’s old shopping trolley look like it ram raided Halfords and drove around the shop covered in superglue.


Part of the package, too, is the aural experience. A well customised car not only has to look the part, it also needs to sound like Russell Grant farting in an empty Opera House after his third dinner of the evening. There are few things funnier than hearing the bellow of a fully tricked out Peugeot 106 from a distance, then turning to watch as it trundles past you just quicker than walking pace, despite it sounding like a Boeing 747.

Which brings me onto the racing thing. Why why why why why do people do it? Why? I own a one-year-old 1.2 Renault Clio, which is a decent little car, but let’s be honest, it’s only just faster than jogging. Therefore, me racing some fool in a Citroen Saxo with tinted windows is akin to two Goths arguing over who’s got the pastiest complexion – it’s a contest you should probably be embarrassed about participating in, more so winning. All you say about yourself when you race somebody at a set of traffic lights, particularly if you’re in a hatchback, is ‘I’m inadequate – join me, won’t you.’

I got a book for Christmas called ‘What Not To Drive’ which I found quite entertaining because it basically concluded that most cars are inherently uncool apart from cheap European hatchbacks, and I own one of those. Sadly, if I’m honest with myself, that really doesn’t make me feel better about having to own a cheap European hatchback. See, for all I’ve just said, what I actually want to own is something big, very fast and very bad for the environment, with tinted windows, huge wheels, an outrageously large spoiler and an exhaust that makes the ground shake. I want a car that will make light bend and turn my face inside out when I put my foot down. I’ll look like a complete idiot in it and everybody will hate me, but I don’t care.

And that’s the problem. I don’t want to race people at traffic lights (anymore) but I need to know that if I chose to, I would win. I also need to know that my car’s faster than most and that it looks better. It’s totally pathetic, I know, but it's true. The genuinely cool people are the ones that really couldn’t care less, which means that me and legions of other people who do are perpetually fighting a losing battle. A really tragic battle that nobody will ever win, but a nonetheless entertaining one for the passer-by. Now, where’s that Halfords catalogue?