I’ve always liked cars, which may perhaps be a dangerous thing for any minister to admit to.
Notwithstanding, I do like cars and in my constituency town of Ruthin one day last summer, I saw a car that was – to my wholly subjective eye – utterly beautiful. It was a 2003 Peugeot 406 coupé, a model that had previously, inexplicably, escaped my notice.
I spent several minutes walking around it, admiring the purity and elegant simplicity of its lines. It was, according to a discreet badge low on its flank, a product of Farina, the Italian design house responsible for some of the most exciting models of such exotic marques as Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo, as well the more interesting offerings of such home-grown names as Morris and Austin in pre-British Leyland days. It was just a mass-produced car, but it was gorgeous.
That’s the thing about cars: uniquely among machines, they have the capacity to inspire, sometimes in equal measure, love and loathing, frustration and adoration. They are not just bits of metal; they are extensions of ourselves. When we are on the move, they become our homes. We personalise them, spending hundreds of pounds on accessories. We cosset them when we are still in love with them and we take it personally when they let us down.
We never feel that way about, for example, our dishwashers.
For most of us, cars are our second-biggest purchase. A big chunk of our income goes into buying, running and maintaining them. So we need to be sure that they are as reliable and economical as possible. While few of us are so naïve or optimistic as to think that we can make money on a car, we also need to be assured that the “residuals” are acceptable.
Importantly, too, we need to be certain that they are as safe as they can be, because their principal function is to convey the perishable human frames of us and our loved ones around the increasingly overcrowded tarmac of this little island. And those of us who care about such things – and most of us do these days – need to feel that our next pride and joy is going to be as friendly as possible to our fragile ecosystem.
And that, in short, is why we need you, the motoring writers.
Because you are there to help us make sure that our hearts, so far as possible, don’t rule our heads; that we don’t fall for an apparently desirable piece of eye-candy that turns out to be a lemon.
You apply your years of experience and your technical expertise in supplying us with that rarest and most valuable of commodities: good, sound advice.
And yes, you love cars too, as I learned at your annual dinner last year. But it is not uncritical love, and therefore it is the best kind.
So please continue with your valuable work, all the more important in these difficult economic times. Tell us, by all means, the bad as well as the good.
And if you must disillusion us, please do it gently.
