Keeping up appearances without being boring.
Discussion
Something strange happened to me the other day.
As a background, I run a small consultancy in the construction industry at the Prime level in the South East. I have never particularly cared about what people think and have turned up to meetings on an old Vespa, an old BMW Cafe Racer, a Porsche 944 and my trusted 2004 Range Rover.
I arrived at a meeting the other day with a client on a private road with only 3 cars parked on it. Outside of the house were the developers cars - Black Jags, the engineers car - Black BMW 7 series, and the Architects car - Black Porsche Cayenne. I currently drive a 2002 Mazda MX5 as I have a fun route to work and like top down action (mainly as I leave work late, and it's the only sun that I ever get!). For the first time in my life, I was embarrased, to the point where I drove out of the road and parked 5 minutes walk away, even declining the offer of a lift to my car afterwards.
I'm ashamed that I did that, but I did it. I'm the knob that wears shorts in the winter and used to ride a Mobylette - I don't do embarrased!
My fellow Director drives a new lease car (as I have in the past) and has made the fair point that if we are getting paid not insignificant sums of money to run peoples projects, we should at least put up a professional front.
I don't like leasing a car, I don't like direct debits and generally I don't like new things. The Mazda is a fun car and pretty much does all I need it to, whilst the Range Rover (which my wife drives as she will not drive a manual) is our tip, holiday and weekend transport.
If you had a budget of £5k (perhaps up to £10k if very good), what fun, preferably convertible, preferably RWD and most importantly NON EMBARRASING car would you get?
Or... would you get a 3 series diesel and keep the rustbucket MX5 on the drive for the weekend? My wife wouldn't allow that in a million years.
I'm trying to preserve credit and savings as we are in the process of moving house...
As a background, I run a small consultancy in the construction industry at the Prime level in the South East. I have never particularly cared about what people think and have turned up to meetings on an old Vespa, an old BMW Cafe Racer, a Porsche 944 and my trusted 2004 Range Rover.
I arrived at a meeting the other day with a client on a private road with only 3 cars parked on it. Outside of the house were the developers cars - Black Jags, the engineers car - Black BMW 7 series, and the Architects car - Black Porsche Cayenne. I currently drive a 2002 Mazda MX5 as I have a fun route to work and like top down action (mainly as I leave work late, and it's the only sun that I ever get!). For the first time in my life, I was embarrased, to the point where I drove out of the road and parked 5 minutes walk away, even declining the offer of a lift to my car afterwards.
I'm ashamed that I did that, but I did it. I'm the knob that wears shorts in the winter and used to ride a Mobylette - I don't do embarrased!
My fellow Director drives a new lease car (as I have in the past) and has made the fair point that if we are getting paid not insignificant sums of money to run peoples projects, we should at least put up a professional front.
I don't like leasing a car, I don't like direct debits and generally I don't like new things. The Mazda is a fun car and pretty much does all I need it to, whilst the Range Rover (which my wife drives as she will not drive a manual) is our tip, holiday and weekend transport.
If you had a budget of £5k (perhaps up to £10k if very good), what fun, preferably convertible, preferably RWD and most importantly NON EMBARRASING car would you get?
Or... would you get a 3 series diesel and keep the rustbucket MX5 on the drive for the weekend? My wife wouldn't allow that in a million years.
I'm trying to preserve credit and savings as we are in the process of moving house...
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