I still love the moment a car settles into a corner and everything goes quiet in your head because for once you are not performing for anyone. Not for your manager, not for your friends, not for the invisible crowd you imagine is watching you live your life. The ego steps back and the noise dissolves. It is the same reason people chase extreme sports or drive a little too quickly on an empty road. Not because they want to die but because they want to feel unmistakably alive. In that split second there is nothing in your mind except the next apex and the next exit and the next corner you have to make.
I even loved cars after an accident that nearly changed my life permanently. It reminded me that driving is a privilege not a given. It also reminded me how much of my identity I had wrapped up in something as simple as turning a wheel and moving through space.
I have been driving since 2007. Cars have improved in so many ways since then. They are safer and faster and more efficient and more capable. They can also do a lot of thinking for you now and that is exactly the problem. The industry calls it refinement. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is just a polite way of saying we have removed the bits that made this interesting, at least there is more power.
When I got my P plates, the German trio had distinct personalities. BMW was for people who actually liked driving. Mercedes was for comfort and that floaty sense of arriving. Audi was the sensible middle child with its own cold precise charm.
Now they all feel like they are chasing the same customer and that customer is not the person who cares about steering feel. It is the person who cares about screens and which colour is available for the cabin lights. That is fine. People can buy what they want. The issue is that these brands still charge you like they are selling something special.
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The point where it stopped feeling special
The slide started in the 2010s. It was subtle at first. A trim piece here. A button there. A little less weight in the door shut. A little more squeak when the weather changes.
Somewhere around 2020, it stopped being subtle. Mercedes interiors became light shows. Audi started looking for places to save money that used to be off-limits. BMW stopped being The Ultimate Driving Machine and started talking about Joy which sounds less like engineering and more like a corporate wellbeing memo.
AMG used to mean one thing. A big V8 and zero shame. The W205 C63 S made its point loudly and repeatedly. Then the W206 C63 arrived with a four-cylinder plug-in hybrid and AMG insisted this was the future and the V8 was not coming back. They sold no cars.
Then came the awkward part where “never” quietly turned into “maybe” with reports that AMG is looking at binning the four-cylinder setup for an inline-six instead. How embrassing.
Porsche is the one that hurts the most because Porsche is the one you want to believe in. You can forgive the price if the car feels solid and honest. Then you sit in a brand new one that costs serious money and the interior creaks like it has been through three owners. It is not about silence. It is about solidity and Porsche is smart enough to know the difference. They should know better than turning sports cars into electrical science projects before suffering a €1 billion loss.
I do not want to sound dramatic but I miss when a car felt like a product made by people who cared. These days it often feels like a product made by people who were told what the margin needs to be.
The warranty ends and the relationship changes
This is where the enthusiast tax kicks in. A lot of us tried to support these brands. We bought the AMG and M and RS stuff. We bought the halo cars. We turned up to events. We defended them. We did the unpaid ambassador work because we genuinely loved the cars.
Then the warranty runs out and everything starts to feel like a trap. If the mechanical parts behave, the electronics start acting up. If the electronics behave, the suspension components decide they want a new life funded by your savings. Radiators and control arms and bushings and sensors and other parts that sound boring until the invoice arrives all line up in an oddly organised way. It is like the car waits for you to relax then it starts charging rent.
What makes it worse is the attitude around it. You would think the brands would treat loyal owners with some warmth and build community properly. Track days. Drives. Experiences that remind you why you bought the car in the first place.
Instead the vibe is often we are doing you a favour by selling you this. You get told to tint your windows at the dealership to avoid warranty issues. You get spoken to like you are a liability not a customer. That is when you realise it is not a relationship. It is a business model.
All-new has become a joke
The marketing does not help either. Everything is all-new now but the changes often feel cosmetic. Look at how the Audi SQ5 story gets sold. It is the headline that sounds exciting. New generation. New tech. A return to petrol power with a 3.0-litre V6 in this generation. Then you look closer and a lot of the formula is familiar. There are no huge changes to the overall concept.
The money side is where it really stings. Australian pricing for the SQ5 now goes past $170K driveaway and my fully-loaded ones was about $125K. So what are you actually paying for. The same old engine. A new face. A few more screens. A bigger invoice. Fewer soft-touch surfaces where your hands actually go. It starts to feel like you are paying more and getting less and being asked to clap for it.
The part where I admit something embarrassing
I never thought I would say this but I am going electric. Yes it is a microwave on wheels. Yes it has no soul. I understand all the jokes. I made some of them. I also understand that it works. It starts. It goes. It does not drag me into the service centre every few months. It does not punish me for wanting to use it like a normal person. I have a family to feed. That sentence alone makes a lot of car choices feel childish in the best way and irresponsible in the worst way. A luxury badge does not feed them. A heritage story does not cover downtime and parts and labour.
If my current car decided to throw a tantrum tomorrow, I would save close to half the money by switching to an EV instead of buying a new equivalent. It would probably be a Tesla if I could live with the brand’s personality. If not, I would buy a BYD and move on with my life. If I hated EVs that much, I would buy a Hyundai or Kia and enjoy the novelty of reliability.
Do not get me started on the Japanese. Too often it is a new face with recycled parts underneath for the last twenty years and an infotainment system that behaves like it does not have a care in the world. The status is gone anyway. The pride is gone. The supposed luxury Germans have been hollowed out enough that the gap between them and a good mainstream car is not what it used to be.
I still love cars. I just do not want to reward bad behaviour
I am not in a rush to buy a Porsche. It is not because it is expensive. It is because I do not want to reward bad behaviour. Car people built the culture that made these brands desirable. We kept the myth alive. We were the ones who cared about steering feel and chassis balance and all the little details that never show up in a brochure.
In return, the brands raised prices and cut corners and optimised everything for shareholders. If they cannot be bothered to save what made them special then I am not sure why I should keep paying to be treated like an idiot. I still love cars. I still love driving. I just do not love what these cars have become.