Why does everything have to be 'sporty'?

[NR91]

Why are we obsessed with handling and 'sportiness' in the UK?

Firstly, I love a fun, fast car as much as any PHer but I've been wondering for a while why we as a nation seem to greatly dislike the idea of a soft and comfortable car. This became apparent when looking for a soft-riding comfy small car for my fianceé.

We ended up ruling out so many cars due to their seat design and lack of support and comfort for her back. I ended up taking her to Lexus and Volvo hoping that these would at least show fewer sporting intentions and despite her choosing to buy a V40 due to it's fantastic seats and damn good looks, it is still unbelievably crashy on British roads. Why are we obsessed with hard-riding cars and sporty handling? Surely not everything has to be a 'sports car'?

I reckoned I've narrowed it down to a few reasons:
1) We have a racing heritage ingrained down the generations with motor racing and we all want to be racing drivers
2) Manufacturers like Rover made cheap 'luxury' cars so unfashionable that the market will never recover
3) We hate any sort of space between the wheel and wheelarch that's visible
4) Reviews down the years have focussed so much on handling and driving feel that we forgot to care about anything else


All this new 'DS' and 'Vignale' branding is nothing more than glitz either...they're all firm riding with hard seats. None of these faux-by-fauxs seem to offer any kind of luxury either!

Am I just too old for my age? I'm sure in other countries people prefer comfort over sportiness. Maybe it's just one of those British quirks?

[NR91]

ukaskew said:

My wife had a Hyundai courtesy car recently with nice big fat tyres, my god did it ride nicely compared to almost everything else I've been in lately.

Base spec is where it's at if you want comfort...smaller wheels, thicker tyres etc. As soon as you spec up things start getting 'sporty'.

Marketing departments hate big tyres and arch gaps.

100% agree. I purposely leased the base spec Audi A6 as it had no 'sporty' options on it and rides on fat tyres and small 17" alloys. It does everything I need from a 24k a year commuter car and is a very pleasant place to be. I noted that you could spec the base spec suspension on the S-Line models if you wanted interestingly. I never feel potholes in it, yet the other half's V40 crashes over every single thing! Admittedly it corners less like a ship but no one cares when 95% of driving takes place on a motorway.