Less Is Sometimes More: Driving Passion

We all now live under the dictatorship of numbers. There are figures for the crisis, unemployment, cars and power. But is all of that really necessary?

The automotive industry’s obsession with numbers

The motor industry is currently gripped by a mathematical frenzy. Sales totals, maximum power outputs, torque figures, wheel sizes and interior-space measurements - everything is reduced to numbers. The most unsuspecting journalists even run a genuine risk of becoming tedious mathematicians: rather than putting their driving experiences and emotions into words, they simply reel off repetitive, uninspiring figures.

Fortunately, there is room for everyone, and everyone has a role to play. Moving on…

Part of the blame lies with this new, grey and characterless face of the motor industry. Its fixation on perfection, safety and performance has led manufacturers to overlook what a vocal minority values most: the passion, emotion and adrenaline of driving.

I can understand a small city car or family MPV being as dull as a hospital Christmas appeal or the Eurovision Song Contest. What I cannot accept is a well-bred sports car with an engine worthy of the name becoming nothing more than a guided missile, in which the driver and their inputs are pushed into the background. The driver has become a mere spectator; effectiveness is now the guiding principle, while enjoyment is only an incidental outcome.

Today, any fool can climb into a sports car with more than 300 bhp and set a blistering lap time without breaking into a cold sweat through a slightly faster corner or after a poorly judged dab of throttle. Everything has become far too “sanitised”. Want a perfect launch? Press a button. A perfect corner? Turn that dial. What happened to the nervous excitement of getting into a car that is supposedly beyond our abilities, then soaking a T-shirt in pure adrenaline? Does that feeling still exist?

Driving passion is not measured in figures

Even if it does, where is it written that a fantastic car must have power pouring from every pore, Formula 1-worthy grip and the ability to corner with flawless grace and composure? It is written nowhere - nor should it be.

Sometimes, all it needs is to be muscular, stubborn and badly behaved. In other words: it needs personality. That is why so many of us hold modest models in such high regard: the Citroën AX; older Golfs; the Datsun 1200; old BMWs; rusty Mercedes-Benz models (do those exist?); post-war Porsches; or small Japanese cars such as the Mazda MX-5.

Automotive passion and driving pleasure have no unit of measurement, which brings us back to this article’s title: less is sometimes more.

Chris Harris proves that less rubber can mean more fun

Thankfully, a few honourable exceptions still endure amid this stagnation of numbers and measurements. Sometimes, turning an otherwise forgettable car into a brilliant automobile requires no more than pressing a button - or perhaps simply changing the tyres.

To support my conspiratorial theory against modernity, watch this video in which the famous Chris Harris has more fun with less… rubber!