All of us today live under the dictatorship of numbers. These are the numbers of the crisis, unemployment, automobiles, power. Is it really necessary?
The automobile industry is currently experiencing a mathematical frenzy. It's the sales figures, the maximum powers, the torques, the size of the wheels, the room rates, everything! To the point that the most incautious journalists run serious risks of becoming bored mathematicians, who instead of debiting in writing the experiences and emotions they feel behind the wheel, debit boring and repetitive numbers.
Fortunately, there is room for everyone and everyone is missed. Continuing...
Part of the blame lies with this new, gray, faded face of the auto industry. The obsession with perfection, safety and performance made brands forget the focus of a noisy minority: the passion, emotion and adrenaline of driving.
I understand that a small utility vehicle or a family van are machines as boring as Christmas in Hospitals or the Eurovision Festival. But I can no longer imagine that a sports car, from good families and with an engine worthy of the name, is a mere guided missile, where the driver and his orders are relegated to the background. From a conductor to a mere spectator, efficiency became the watchword and fun a mere consequence.
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Today, any "turnip" takes a sports car with more than 300 hp and makes a circuit in "cannon" time, without even experiencing a cold sweat in a curve made a little faster, or a touch of badly calculated accelerator. Everything has become too “hygienic”. I want to make a perfect push-button boot. Perfect curve? Run that command. Where did that nervous kid go to get in a car that is supposedly beyond our capabilities, and sweat a t-shirt with raw adrenaline? Does this feeling still exist?
And even if there is. Where is it written that a car to be fantastic has to have power pouring out of every pore, a grip worthy of a Formula 1 and curve with all the elegance and composure? It's not written anywhere, nor does it have to be.
Sometimes it's enough to be virile, stubborn and bad-behaved. In other words: having personality. That's why many of us cherish modest models like: Citroën AX: Old Golf's; Datsun 1200; old BMW's; Rusted Mercedes (does it exist?); Post-World War II Porsches; or small Japanese cars like the Mazda MX-5.
Car passion and driving pleasure have no measuring unit, a statement that refers us to the title of this article: less sometimes is actually more.
Fortunately, there are still honorable exceptions to this morass of numbers and measurement units. And sometimes, to turn an unremarkable car into a fantastic car, you just press a button, or perhaps simply change the tyres.
To testify to my conspiracy theory against modernity, check out this video where the famous Chris Harris has more fun with less… rubber!