Do you love your car?

Thoughts on old vs. new cars

I’ve driven to Auckland and back twice recently in my 1985 Audi urquattro, a trip of around 800km and 10 hours of driving. It has been a few months since driving the ur a long distance, and it’s always an experience. After daily-driving mostly modern hybrid and electric cars, getting back into the Audi is at-once familiar and strange. I have to re-learn the car, regain that muscle memory.

At first it seems noisy, there are creaks and rattles as the old interior shifts and flexes. There are vibrations, the suspension seems unrefined, hitting the bump stops on some of the road joins and potholes.

But soon it becomes normal, the weight of the steering, the throw of the gear lever, the balance of the clutch. The narrow A-pillars give a great forward view despite the car being lower to the road than almost every other vehicle.

On bends, with small amounts of throttle, the urquattro pushes on, wanting to understeer. My instinct is to ease off, take the corner more slowly, but that’s not the quattro way! Squeeze the throttle more and the car starts to feel neutral. Push harder and it starts to pull around, four tyres gripping the road, drawing the car around the corner. Keep on the power and it holds the line in a most pleasurable way. Once you realise this, that you need to be on the power from the apex, the car feels smaller, tighter. The body roll, compared to a modern car, is noticeable, despite my car being on 40mm lowering springs, but that just adds to the fun. It’s grin-inducing every time.

As I was driving I started to think about why I feel so much more satisfaction from driving my 40 year-old car compared to the new ones I’ve been lucky enough to drive. I just drove a Mustang Mach-E press car for two weeks and although it’s fast, I really struggled to find anything to like, or dislike about it. It’s objectively better than the Audi in every way. It’s much faster at 3.7 seconds 0-100kph, and can take corners faster. It’s more comfortable, quieter, significantly safer, more spacious, has more luggage space. the stereo is great. The screens and all-round hi-res camera views are excellent and make manoeuvring and parking easier and safer. It’s even not-too-annoying with its safety systems, and things like lane departure alert stay switched off when you tell them to. It looks pretty good, especially next to all of the homogeneous-looking designs of the standard family SUV. I’d argue that it probably shouldn’t have been called a Mustang, and it makes me think me of a normal Mustang that ate too may pies.

But silliness aside, why don’t I like it more? Am I not the target audience? Middle-aged with a family, needs a good commuter car but with a sporty edge to satisfy the midlife crisis. Safe and reliable with room in the boot for the dog or some DIY supplies. Sort of, but I’m too much of an enthusiast, too willing to see the Mustang and Mach-E naming as the badge-engineering it is. Some Mustang head-and tail lights stuck onto a solid, competent electric crossover transport device.

And don’t get me started on Teslas. They’re great transport appliances, and they can go fast, in the most uninteresting way. Almost every EV seems the same, the only differentiators being the interior design and seat comfort, exterior looks (mostly bland, sometimes weird), stereo quality, and road noise. None of these things make them interesting or fun to drive.

So what’s the secret sauce that EVs need to make them interesting? We certainly haven’t found it yet, not for us real enthusiasts. Some will tell you it’s the acceleration, the speed. And yeah that’s a thrill, in the same way a rollercoaster launching is a thrill. But do it more than a couple of times and it can make you queasy, give you a sore neck even. And it’s worse for your passengers. It’s a party trick.

Saying that, Matt Farah had some good things to say about the Hyundai Ioniq 5N

In the BMW i7 what makes it great it’s everything except the drive. It’s the luxury, the comfort, the materials, the sheer impressiveness of all of the technology. That’s a car that benefits from electric drive because it makes it more refined and luxurious.

I’m not saying EVs are bad cars at all, for the everyday they are great. If I’m commuting to work and there will be queues, or I have to park on the street or a supermarket car park I’ll take the EV. But given the choice of going anywhere further than the shops, I’m picking the 40 year-old Audi over the 3 month-old Ford.

I was trying to get my head around why I would make these choices, what makes the old car more attractive and fun. I think it’s the imperfection, the feeling of being inside a living thing, there’s stuff going on in the engine, at speeds and temperatures you probably don’t want to think about, and so much waste – noise, heat, vibration, if you get the wrong gear you make it even less efficient. In an EV the power delivery is just there, it’s effortless and easy. Combustion engines aren’t linear, that noise and vibration enables you to feel the engine doing its work. Even more so with turbo engines, and doubly with 80s turbo engines.

But when you’re powering along through a twisty road, on the accelerator, the brakes, timing the clutch just perfectly and blipping the throttle as you downshift for a tight bend. When it all comes together just right, it’s magical.

How else to describe it? Mechanical things have soul, somehow. The movement, the sheer mechanical nature, hundreds of parts with tiny tolerances, machined perfectly so that just the right amount of oil stops them from welding themselves together.

Electric cars, well they go fast, they corner well, they’re efficient and will likely cost less to run and maintain but it’s like driving in Mario Kart compared to a petrol kart on a real track.

No noise, no vibration from the powertrain, no sense of how fast you’re going apart from the display in front of you. In an ICE car you get a feel for it: in you just know from the sound of the motor that you’re in 4^th gear at 3500 revs and probably just nudging over the 100kph limit, you ease off as you look at the speedo, just to check. Yep, 103, it’s subconscious, and that’s what  connects you to the car, there’s a bond.

One of the things that interests me about cars, and the thing I really should be writing more about here, is the bonds we form with our machines. Will we form the same bonds with electric cars? Probably. It’s partly about the experiences the vehicle brings, the things you go through together.

But for me, it’s the old, the imperfect, the less reliable that makes things interesting. Even when they break, it makes for a story, it’s something you can fix and work on yourself. It’s the challenge of finding and fixing the problem, looking for the rare part, or making something else do the job.

How do you feel about your car? Just transport? Or something more?