Oh Dear. Been cruising through the weirder cars on Ebay again. This reminded of a particularly odd French car I bought a few years ago and I ended up writing about it for an obscure online magazine. Its sort of re-posted here below but remember this was a few years ago and Im much better now... When is a small car cool? Or put another way, when is it ok to be seen in a small car? You see, when most people drive a small car, they simply look stupid, cheap, miserly and generally ridiculous. But as David St Hubbins said in the film ‘Spinal Tap’, it’s such a fine line between clever and stupid. I’ve been thinking that certain small cars might just be actually quite cool. To be cool, it needs to be quirky, or a masterpiece of design or engineering. That rules out Corsas, Fiestas, Clios etc though anything French or Italian already has one tentative toe on the ‘cool’ ladder. The original small car to be in was the classic Mini, with actors, pop stars and royalty queuing up to own one – preferably before they rusted way or before water had chance to impregnate the ignition system: the broken-down-by-the side-of-the-road look is definitely not a good one. You might argue that a Citroen 2CV also fits the bill but while its quirky, its too closely associated with flower power types who fill their car windows with ‘Save the Whale’, ‘CND’ and ‘Recyle Some Tins’ stickers and as everyone knows, hippys are about as uncool as it gets today. No, for the whole cool small car thing to work, you really need to give off the aura of someone who can actually afford to run a big Merc or a Ferrari, rather than someone who looks poor enough to have an intimate understanding of the local constabulary’s ‘stop and search’ policy. Think James May, who owns various Bentleys and Porsches and who uses a Fiat Panda as his daily smoker. As you can see, I’ve been giving this a bit too much thought recently and thats because I’ve just bought a Renault Twingo. Not the new re-vamped Twingo (around £7000 and packed with gadgetry) but the original early 90’s weirdo oddball design complete with brightly coloured switchgear and the most basic of specifications. Power steering, electric windows, air con and central locking are just a few of the many features you won’t find on the original Twingo. It hasn’t even got a glovebox. It was never offered for sale in the UK so its only available with left hand drive, which alone adds 50% to the coolness factor. To top matters off, mine is finished in superbly horrible shade of orange. Achieving coolness in this might be pushing it a bit – I’ll be happy if I can just avoid looking like a right tit. If my photo starts appearing regularly in ‘Heat’ magazine, (‘North East small-time car salesman poses nonchalantly next to an orange Twingo’), then you know I’ve got the whole small/cool car thing right. Cars that might be cool: Mini (the original), Suzuki Cappucino, Fiat 500. And the early Twingo (obviously). Cars that are definitely not cool: Citroen Saxo, Axiam, anything electric, Corsa, Fiesta. Any of those little Japanese/Far Eastern rabbit hutch on wheels things such as Suzuki Wagon R, Daewoo Matiz etc.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 21:05:22 +0000
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