What Car Should You Be Driving?

Here’s the thing. We’re car enthusiasts. We pick and choose our cars on emotional whims, and spend aching hours obsessing over the cars we desperately want to own. Often, the cars we choose are neither cheap nor practical, and many of us will admit our fleets are not always in the best mechanical shape. That raises a question: What car should you be driving, instead of whatever impractical/unreliable/suboptimal machine is sitting in your driveway?

I’ll openly admit I’m guilty of some folly in this regard. I drive an Audi TT – a drop-top roadster, of course – in one of the rainiest cities in Australia. I live deep in the inner city, so I barely ever actually drive the thing, and its ride height is so low that it’s getting beat up every time I go over a speed bump. Of course, it’s my dream car, so I hold on to it for dear life.

Basically, I should be driving something else. And I know exactly what that car is. See, on the day I bought the worst car I’ve ever owned, I had actually test-driven something else. It was a first-generation Honda HR-V. This vehicle ticked a lot of boxes for me. It was all-wheel-drive, with a good ride height, so I could totally blast it around on the beach in the summer. Plus, it had a manual transmission. Ultimately, though, it felt cheap and a bit janky, so I passed it over for that hateful BMW.

Now that I’m living in the city, I realize this Honda would have been perfect for me. It had a nice high driving position, and absolutely wouldn’t fuss over any of the bumps, grates, or kerb ramps that plague the city. With no turbo, it would have been a touch better on gas than the Audi, plus it ran on regular instead of premium. It also had tons of cargo space, and was so cheap, I could hardly make it worse even if I drank four liters of Mountain Dew and spewed all over the interior. I could have found parts for it all over the world. Plus, it was still manual, so it’d satiate that part of my enthusiast brain.

This would have been an altogether better car for the kinds of driving I do these days—infrequent, on clogged city roads. Plus, its just-barely-off-roadable ability would have served me well on the occasional jaunt to the out-of-doors. Still, I love my Audi, and I’m not complaining. I just realize that there was a better, cheaper option for me.

Now, since this is Autopian Asks, I throw this over to you. What should you be driving, instead of the brown diesel Cadillac coupe you’re so addicted to?

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