The purple Porsche

I had a strange dream last night. I do envy those people who have dreams that make a coherent narrative – the best mine ever do is to give me scenes which could be, given sufficient creativity, merged into a story. In last night’s dream I owned a purple Porsche –  it didn’t look quite right (too angular) but I knew it was one, and it was covered in mud and parked in a railway station car park. In my dream I was going away on holiday, and I was undecided whether to leave the car where it was, or move it. Eventually, I decided to move it and felt comforted for having made the decision – I was clearly anxious about leaving it in the car park for a week. My grandfather was in the dream too, but that’s another story, I imagine.

The dream itself doesn’t matter, what I started thinking about was why was there a Porsche in my dream? I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of a car before and I don’t think of myself as a petrol-head at all. Is it possible I’ve been mistaken all these years?

Of all the cars in the world, a Porsche is the only one I’ve ever really wanted (“wanted” is too strong, it’s more like “if money were no object, then I would like a Porsche”) …except, of course, for a really elegant 80s Mercedes 500SL cabriolet (you know the one, like Richard Gere had in “American Gigolo”). But an old car wouldn’t really be practical – would it? – a Porsche, purple or otherwise, would, wouldn’t it?

Persuading myself that lovely old cars are practical is a bad habit I’ve indulged for years: the only car that I have ever truly loved was an old Jaguar XJS 3.6 manual coupé, in “bordeaux” (to Jaguar, “burgundy” to the rest of us). So in love was I that I washed it every week, and only ever used just water – no soap. It was 10 years old when I got it (I convinced myself that such a solid piece of engineering was good for at least 200,000 miles), and it had to be practical because I needed it for work every day. I loved everything about it – the huge bonnet; the breathy, low roar of its straight six engine; the way it fitted round me; the idiosyncratic “dials”, the fact the handbrake was on the wrong side, the acceleration and the feeling of wafting along effortlessly at 100 miles an hour. I was besotted and it was, in fact, totally impractical – it needed untold litres of synthetic oil at vast expense and managed about 16 miles to the gallon; I lavished money and time on it and then, just when I had got the last piece of bodywork right, I crashed it on the A5! I was heartbroken: the next day the insurance company came and took it away and wrote it off.

My current car is a 528i BMW Sport; it’s 11 years old and still in very good nick. It was a youngster for me when I got it (only six years old). Fast though, but these days I don’t drive very fast . Better economy than the Jag, about 28 mpg (generally). Still impractical – insurance costs too much, car tax costs too much and these days 28 mpg is just pathetic (and expensive). I spend a lot of money driving a lot of metal around when there’s usually only me in it and rarely more than 2 people.

And these aren’t the only examples of petrol-hedonism in my life – I’m also admitting to a totally impractical left-hand drive Lancia β coupé, possibly the only car ever built that was more trouble than an Alpha Romeo!

Why do I, why does one, why do we, have this desire for cars that we value much more highly in our minds than their intrinsic worth? What is a Porsche anyway apart from a souped-up VW Beetle? Why not have a rock solid Golf instead or a Polo or even a Nissan Micra?; it’s as cute as a cute thing, fun to drive and manages about 50mpg, costs almost nothing to insure and almost no car tax.  In practice, given the speed limit, these cars are of no less intrinsic worth than a Porsche; worth more in fact if you have more luggage than a toothbrush and a change of underwear!

Or better yet (heresy warning!), why have a car at all?