Practicality or Sportiness?

WARNING: AUTO CONTENT - CAR-PHOBIC INDIVIDUALS PLEASE LOOK AWAY


The opportunity of spotting an interesting vehicle, though rare, still comes by occasionally. And since my mum is usually the only passenger (or rather, driver - I'm only 16) in the car, I usually bore her with them (sorry).

However, my mum is a fan of Alfa Romeos, and her ultimate object of desire is nothing less than the absolutely beautiful Alfa 147.

So cue the Honda at a stoplight. Behind a blood-red Alfa Romeo 156 Sportwagon (or estate/station wagon, for those of you not in the know). Oh. My. God. It's. Pretty.

"That's a nice car," I remarked, masking the irresistible urge to drool all over.

Mum, however, shrugged.

"I'd never buy that."

I looked at her. Flabbergasted.

"That must be Alfa's company car," she added.

The look of sheer horror on my face immediately turned into one of total cluelessness.

She then explained that nobody should buy an Alfa estate, because Alfas are meant to be sporty and not practical, and anyone who goes out and buys one is a complete clot.

Slowly, I began to see where she was coming from, even though I protested that:

1. It's still sporty (I'm still drooling as I type).

2. Someone who wants an Alfa but needs space would have no choice but to buy, naturally, an Alfa estate. That way he/she could have an Alfa and carry the flat-pack furniture, something anyone with that much dough would doubtlessly buy a lot of.

But then I came to the part of a Porsche SUV (specifically, this lumpen, bulbous, gargantuan piece of utter shit the bods at Stuttgart call a Porsche), and at that moment the few shards of logic there was were shattered.

She actually said a Cayenne was a logical... thing for Porsche to build. A Porsche-badged smog-spewing, gas-guzzling, monster. One that looks like it had been in the middle of a 165-car pile-up and bolted back into shape by a person who can't differentiate his mouth from his arse.

I know people buy more of these than they buy iPods. But the fact remains that an SUV is far less "sporty" than an estate. It's
more space-consuming, drinks a hell of a lot of petrol yet is a million times slower, handles like a barge, spews more good-ol' carbon dioxide than a electrical powerplant, and looks utterly horrible. And it trumps the estate because it's the "in" thing? Gosh.

I know me and my mother disagree on a lot of things, but this takes the cake.

Like Jeremy Clarkson puts it, "It's not a bad car and in many respects it's a very good one, but just as no-alcohol lager defeats the objective, so does a Porsche off-roader. Can you imagine Land Rover producing a rear engined sports car? Exactly".