Motoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guides

It doesn’t always make sense, but it is always right

By Shahzad Sheikh

Happiness for me is a Lotus Esprit

Here at MME, we encourage owners to send in reviews of their own cars, and we’ve had several very interesting ones sent in which we’ve published in our reviews section. (Keep ’em coming folks, just email text and pics to MME@MotoringME.com). Read them here. 

Recently Partha Srinivasan sent in a story about how he ended up buying a Renault Logan. Now you may immediately jump to certain preconceptions when hearing that model name, but I say hold your scoffs and stay your protests, because said reader confessed to being profoundly pleased with his daily driver.

He essentially ended up with a brand-new car for the price of a used one (which is what he was intending to get), and by taking advantage of the 50,000km service contract he negotiated into the purchase, plus a low fuel consumption figure of 7.1L/100km, he’s hardly spent anything in eight months and 25,000km. That makes him very happy, and why not!

So delighted is he with the little Logan that he’s even named it ‘Hank’ from the X-Men because it’s blue. Although… isn’t Wolverine otherwise known as Logan?

No matter, the point is that happiness is a relative term when it comes to cars and is never really specific to any particular kind of car either. I miss our Mark 1 family Honda Accord from the 1980s which we owned for a long time and still harbour a lot of affection for.

Others swear by Corollas, whilst some wouldn’t be content with anything less than a Rolls-Royce. Fair play if you can afford them. Some hanker after the first example of the latest edition of the newest car, whilst others find fulfillment in owning a car they first saw, whilst holding their dad’s hand and pointing a sticky lollipop at it, during a motor show many, many years ago.

Happiness is... well just look at it for God's sake. Even so, it's perfectly okay for you NOT to agree with me...

It’s something that’s hard to define, like that inexplicable X-factor, and is unique to each individual car fan.

Even whilst we get to drive many disparate cars here at MME, some markedly magnificent and others miserably mundane, it’s not always the best, the smartest, or the sexiest metal that makes us happy – although admittedly it sometimes is exactly that, let’s be honest.

However I’ve driven a Ferrari FF around for days and not the merest hint of a grin has been found on my face, intellectual appreciation and admiration yes, but no sounds of cackling from the cockpit – which is exactly what a Roush Mustang elicits from me each time I simply start it up – the Ford makes me ecstatic!

After laps in AMG monsters on Yas Marina circuit, I’ve required surgery to reattach my dropped jaws, but there was little desire to embark for another round. Okay, I geddit, they’re effing fast. On the other hand an evening in a much less powerful Toyota 86 on the same circuit made me wish for a Groundhog Day of my very own.

And whilst you’d imagine I’d be a churlish and ungrateful bar-steward for not appreciating ‘ownership’ of a half-million dirham LS luxury saloon lent to me for a couple of months, the fact is that I never once looked back at it, nor had a ‘moment’ in it, and wasn’t even sorry to drop it back.

On the other hand the tiddly Toyota Yaris that preceded it received many a pat on the bonnet from my palm, and each time I did glance back, I felt it was giving me a cheeky wink as if sharing a naughty secret. It was light and chuckable and responsive and… well a hoot actually. It made me laugh out loud. Go figure.

But all this is to illustrate that to each his own, one man’s stinking dog is another’s adorable puppy. And that’s exactly how it should be. Which is why you don’t have to agree with our verdicts when we review a car, because there is no right or wrong, really, they’re all just a starting point for discussion and debate.

We don’t conduct lab-coat technical analysis here, we’re actually very subjective when it comes to cars and that’s exactly as it should be, because cars are evocative and emotionally-charged objects, (and we do genuinely love ’em). Like many of you, I suspect, we often find ourselves day-dreaming about the Lotus Esprit and lusting after a ’68 Fastback Mustang (or maybe that’s just specifically me), whilst detesting a few others with a passion verging on homicidal.

But that’s the thing about automobiles, they really get under your skin. Regardless of what they might be, sometimes they make you really happy. And you know what? That’s perfectly okay.

Tell us what cars make you happy below