No super cars for me revisited
By Brian Clegg
REVISIT SERIES - An updated post from March 2015
Every now and then I get a semi-spam email (i.e. something I probably accidentally signed up to receive, but never really wanted) offering me the opportunity to buy cut-price ‘treats’, like a super car experience. I know some people love this kind of thing, but I just don’t get it.
I’ve got three problems with the whole ‘super car experience’ thing. But before that, I need to distinguish this from the early Gerry Anderson series, which I loved as a boy. Here in the UK it was a black and white series, but it appears from the DVD that it was shot in colour. For primary school me, the best thing about it was that our Ford Anglia was excellent for playing Supercar, as the heater controls (the heater was an optional extra) made an excellent substitute for throttles, and it even had little fins on the tail, though they aren’t visible in my picture below. However, I am not referring to Supercar, but rather an ‘experience’ day where you get to drive something like a Ferrari or an Aston Martin.
My first issue is that I wouldn’t actually want one of these cars as they are incredibly impractical (anyone remember the Top Gear where the presenters tried to get three out of an underground car park in Paris?), they’re ludicrously expensive and they make a silly noise. I’ve never understood the appeal of the sort of noise that boy racers try to imitate by having a dustbin in place of an exhaust pipe on their Ford Fiesta. It sounds loud, nasty and industrial. My favourite car noise is an electric car – but that’s a different story.
The second problem is that on an experience day they wouldn’t just give you the keys and say ‘Have fun,’ they would expect you to drive it around a track, with experts looking on and sniggering at your inability to ‘take the correct line’ or brake at the sweet spot, or G spot or whatever it is. I did once accidentally go to a track day, and quite enjoyed being driven around by an expert (scary though it was), but there was no way I was going to do it myself, in front of others.
Most importantly, though, if I did have a drive in a super car (and if I did, it would be an Aston Martin, no question), it would have to be my own vehicle. I don’t understand the envy-driven gratuitous excitement of having a go at something you can’t actually have. It’s a phenomenon that’s quite closely related to pornography, perhaps most closely in those house porn ‘Escape to the Country’ style house programmes where people who are selling a 3 bed semi in London look round 10 bathroom mansions in the country, which normal people could never afford, so they watch the programme to drool instead. It’s one of the nastiest aspects of capitalism.
So there you have it. Super car experiences are for those whose existence is unsatisfactory. Get, as they say, a life.
These articles will always be free – but if you’d like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
See all Brian’s online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.
Source: http://brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/03/no-super-cars-for-me-revisited.html
