Friday 8th December 2017

Prior Convictions: Guilty as charged

Why you should never feel guilty about your motoring pleasures...

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Some cars are better than others. I don't think that's a particularly controversial viewpoint; especially if, like a few people on the payroll at this website's very publisher, your career depends on it.

But some cars are so much worse than others that the other day, on the other mag for which I work, I was asked to name my guilty pleasure. Which car, I was asked, do I really like, despite the fact that it is either poor, or dated, or embarrassing, or, well, I dunno, for some reason generally despised.

So I thought of a car that apparently wasn't very good but that I've got quite a lot of time for - a Volvo 360, incidentally. I like the Volvo 360. The improper Volvo, the one with DAF bits. I like it. There, I said it.

Perhaps you have a car like this too. Perhaps you're slightly ashamed or embarrassed to admit that you have a soft spot for the automotive equivalent of James Blunt. Maybe it's a Range Rover Evoque convertible or a Chrysler PT Cruiser or a Vauxhall Corsa that's 40 per cent filler, and you don't want to admit it in case somebody who only respects GT Porsches and M BMWs or Type R Hondas mocks it.

Well, sod that. Because you know what? I think all cars are fabulous. That any car is terrific. Because every single car in the world offers its driver a sense of freedom and liberation that taking the bus doesn't. The motor car is The Machine That Changed The World, according to MIT's $5m book, and largely it has changed it for the better. The car has brought liberty, prosperity, trade and freedom to more people than every other human invention. You probably already know this, but anything on four wheels deserves to be celebrated.

I've seen in the past fortnight alone what a car can do for somebody, even in middle England, because my 17 year-old has passed her driving test. She's not particularly into cars, but she will love forever a supermini that's as old as she is because of what it means to her today: freedom, liberation, the ability to go wherever she wants, whenever she wants, without being beholden to the inflexible timetables of either railways or her parents.

So no matter how bad the car, no matter what the colour, what the noise, what the powertrain or condition, or whether it's slammed or wrapped or has purple neon lights underneath it, if somebody likes it, that's a fact worth celebrating and cherishing, not ridiculing and embarrassing.

There are enough people in the world who want you to feel guilty about liking cars at all. There aren't enough of us to be divided. So I'm damned sure I'm not going to make you feel guilty about liking a specific car. Even third-class driving is still better than first-class public transport or walking. No guilty pleasures here.

[anonymous-user]

Was a Volvo 360 "not very good" at the time though?

Sure, today it's pensionable, but at the time it had a reasonably competitive 115bhp, build quality that made the average Ford of the time feel like a cereal packet, and actually reasonably linear handling. No, not VERY sporty, but back then an equivalent 320i wasn't exactly going to set the world alight either. iirc, the price was ok too. I'm going to suggest the biggest problem with the Volvo 360 was the people who drove them.....!

(it took another 10 or so years before Volvo jumped on the "performance bandwagon" with cars like the 850R)