10 November

Car enthusiasts will tell you every day of the week that a ‘driver’s car’ is the ultimate type of car. What they really mean by that is a car that is good at going fast around corners. Basically a race car, driven on the road. They will also tell you that they, driving those cars, represent the ultimate in driving skill. Nearly always these cars are manual, and make lots of broom broom noises. In reality they’re teenagers who used cars as a way to differentiate their identity from other people. And then just never grew up. It’s a sad and pathetic attempt to create a status for themselves as somehow the ultimate arbiters of what is good in driving and vehicles. Driver’s cars are nearly always uncomfortable. They’re also lethal weapons on public roads. Manual gearing is an engineering embarrassment. Car noise is a car farting. Driving fast is just one driving skill, and not even a particularly hard one. Try comparing it to sex. If driving was sex, ‘driver’s car’ people would tell you the best sex is the sex you do fast, with lots of grunting noises and being thrown around the bed with high g-forces. (Not coincidentally how a lot of teenagers have sex.) Driving has an enormously greater number of dimensions than this. Above all, it’s a *social* act. The best drivers ‘drive to the conditions’ (another driver’s car favourite), but to them the conditions means ‘other drivers on the road’. Not ‘how fast I can get this thing around a corner’. Genuinely good drivers are also smooth, finding the optimum line and speed for a sort of gliding across the road while maintaining passenger comfort. A great car also has beautiful suspension that increases that comfort, that allows you take in the sights as you drive, not just be tunnel-vision focused on getting everybody else out of your way so you can get there faster.