We are all obsessed with luxury. We crave luxury hotels with down -filled pillows. If we are lucky, we might be able to unpack once with a luxury watch. Even our facial cleaner is luxurious. We can hardly function without luxurious, padded toilet paper. And car manufacturers suffer from exactly the same.
Many of them don’t even mention themselves more car manufacturers, but ‘luxury brands‘. A vague concept that nobody can really explain without falling into pretentious sentences full of seductive sounding words that ultimately mean nothing. I have lost count of the number of presentations in which I was told about the intended customer: someone who wears Gucci Loafers, narrowly and fills his days with planning philanthropic projects.
An old panda, that’s luxury
But the sad reality is: car manufacturers no longer understand how you offer real luxury. No matter how deep the carpet is, how excluding the materials, how quiet or powerful or refined the engine. The real luxury, namely the luxury driving experience, is dead. And I only realized that when I purchased a Fiat Panda of 1,600 euros, with fabric upholstery and old -fashioned cracks to open the rear windows.
No, I’m not going crazy. Think carefully about what real luxury is. Time is luxury. No requirements, no pressure – that is luxury. Simplicity and convenience are luxury. If you look at it that way, modern cars are just … well, frustrating. In many ways the Panda is the most luxurious thing I have driven in a long time. That modest small car showed its benefits all the more clear when I got a new test car at the same time: a BMW that was 50 times as expensive.
It starts with something simple than the key. The panda key is small, slim and simply inserts you into the ignition lock, so that the interior stays nice and tidy. The BMW key is huge and is full of tiny, piegele buttons: some on the side, one at the front. While driving, he rattles annoyingly in the cup holder.
Start and go
In the Panda you are behind the wheel within five seconds and you drive away. In the BMW you must first choose a profile. You can drive in guest mode, but then your preferences are not loaded. So I choose ‘driver’. After which a warning appears that this promotion will change your settings (that is precisely the intention) and I have to press ‘activate’. After that there is a delay while the profile is loading – during that time I can’t do anything with the screen: do not adjust heating, do not set navigation, do not change radio. The Panda has already left the street.
Then I want to disable the squeaky speed salarm, which is always activated when you start the car again. Fortunately that is possible with one button. But expanding the terrible lane assistant system? For that I have to press the main menu button of the touchscreen, scroll to the driving settings (that icon moves at random moments), to find that system in the menu, switch off, and then confirm that I really want to disable it. Well, by that time I was either crashed, or I stopped to set fire to that thing.
In the Panda you are the boss
This is not a luxury. Systems like these are the death blow for what cars really have to offer: freedom and escape. The feeling that you are in charge of your own route. The Panda cherishes all those things, and a strange peace drops over you as soon as you get in and drive away. No new car can match that feeling. Whatever he costs.
