Is a car being pointless a bad thing?

[thinfourth2]

Oh my god look at that car it is utterly pointless they scream


But what does this actually mean?

It could be easily argued that any supercar is pointless as they are big thirsty and polluting and are distinctly crap at going to the shops.

So why it is a pointless car to my mind this is a could thing.

So what is a pointless car and is it a good thing or a bad thing

[sebhaque]

A lot of OMG ITS POINTLESS claims are from women (or angry men) who see a nice car doing daily chores - going to work, the supermarket, dropping the kids off at school etc. If you turn up in a VXR8 it's pointless because it's just a fast car and you can only go 70 in this country and it's killing the environment yada yada.

So they get back in their Range Rover and drive home.

[anonymous-user]

you are quite right. Most people here would say supercars are worthwhile, even though as you say, from a purely pragmatic point of view they are pointless. If you are prepared to accept such vehicles as supercars despite their massive compromises, logically you have to accept all other 'pointless'/heavily compromised cars.

[anonymous-user]

even if that means the BMW X6 or whatever it is.

[bikerkeith]

Any classic car, or a second car used just for fun is "pointless" as it doesn't serve any serious purpose. Here's to pointless cars.

[otolith]

I think I can understand where they are coming from, even though I obviously don't agree - for instance, I think that filling half the wardrobe space with shoes is pointless, and if I owned a pair of shoes which made my feet hurt, I would put them in the bin and never ever buy any similar ones again. This point of view is completely lost on my wife (though to her credit, she likes pointless cars as much as I do, and even more than she likes pointless shoes).

[Devil2575]

I voted yes because I wouldn'd say that many of the cars described are pointless.

A pointless car to me is the BMW X6. All the size, weight, cost and other disadvantges of a 4x4 but without any of the interior space and off road ability. Like a pair of silk wellys

However there aren't many cars like this. Most cars often described as pointless are ones that in the the right circumstance are very good at something. Cars like the X6 excell at nothing.

[dilbert]

Pointless, is just a name that thickies can use to exert derision on those they could never understand.
Pointless, is just a term to negate something that they could never hope to understand.

And it's not pointless because the point is, it's good for the mind, the heart and the soul.

Personally I would never find a fat person in the supermarket, walk up to them and tell them that their eating is pointless. That is because they eat so that they can feel happy. The same is true for having a car of ridicule.

It's not socially acceptable to make fun of people for being fat, so why is it acceptable to make fun of people for having an exotic car? Both submit to their vice, ultimately to feed their head. What exactly is wrong with that?

The only reason an X5 is less pointless than a Dodge Challenger, is that you can get more food in the back of an X5. It's only a small step to realise that glamorous people who own an X5, are merely glamorous people who are not yet fat!!!

Edited by dilbert on Saturday 15th May 11:32

[Alfanatic]

The X6 isn't pointless. Someone's bought it, so it makes sense to someone. It also fulfils the primary role of any car, which is to save you time and energy while moving you from one place to another. A car that can't move would be pointless, and I can't think of any examples of cars with a perfect failure to move record.

I don't like the X6, but being bad at everything it does is not the same as being pointless, IMO.

The altenative is to accept that every car is pointless to someone.

[ewenm]

As long as your car has a point FOR YOU then who cares what everyone else thinks?

[thinfourth2]

Devil2575 said:

. Cars like the X6 excell at nothing.

Would you like to argue that point with a BMW accountant?

[otolith]

I would guess that in absolute terms, the X6 is better at most things than the vast majority of cars on the road.

[Pvapour]

if it fills a need for whoever owns it then it is not pointless.

for me its hard to point a finger at anything in life and say its pointless, there will always be some point in its existence, no matter how small or insignificant to you or I.

[ArtVandelay]

Depends on how it's pointless really.

Say a car has lots of power and was too extreme for driving on the UK's beaten tarmac and was more expensive than the established competition (thinking a hardcore Noble M600 here). It would probably be deemed pointless but it would still be a car that appeals to petrol heads so it wouldn't be a bad thing. The LFA has been called pointless because of it's list price and to most people it seems insanely expensive compared to the competition. To someone who wipes their arse with cashmere and has the title Sheikh, it's just another toy.

A car which can do 100mpg but costs twice the price of the car that does 60mpg would also be pointless as you would never realistically see savings and thus would be a waste of money. Like an extreme example of the VW Bluemotions, which IIRC cost more than the standard eco models and get slightly improved mpg.

[TheLurker]

Pvapour said:

if it fills a need for whoever owns it then it is not pointless.

This.

[otolith]

ArtVandelay said:

A car which can do 100mpg but costs twice the price of the car that does 60mpg would also be pointless as you would never realistically see savings and thus would be a waste of money.

Depends whether you bought it because you a miser or because you are a treehugger.

[The Nur]

Britain's car industry is built on pointless cars! Aside from the uber expensive saloons (bentley continental, rolls etc) does Britain make any practical cars?

The only thing that comes to mind when I think about this are morgans, caterhams, ultimas, arials, astons, bristol, lotus, nobles, ginetta etc etc etc and none of these could be described as practical.

Yet practicality is almost top of our list when buying a new car. Does not compute.

[Paul_M3]

If a car makes the person who owns it smile, even just once, then it is not pointless. Regardless of whether its a supercar, a big 4x4, or a Reliant Robin.

[Negative Creep]

Same argument could be applied to anything. After all, expensive food is pointless when you could buy Tesco Value Noodles

[marshalla]

A car is never pointless.


Some people just don't see the point though.