Opinion: Loving the car you buy

Practicing what you preach.

It’s often easier said than done, not least in this weird old world we call automotive journalism. The frequent stream of cars floating past your door – yup, life is hard – means the ones that really dig under your skin, that etch themselves indelibly into your memory, are almost always the weird ones. The ones you’d have to be pretty steely to actually purchase yourself.

Listing all the oddballs us European writers have lavished praise on – only for their sales to be paltry and their depreciation dismal – might fill the rest of this page.

The Fiat Multipla was a bold, inventive car that simply looked too bizarre for the buying public to take as seriously as the magazines did, while Skoda reinventing the loveable Yeti as the sedate Karoq provides a very visual demonstration of how cautious actual car buyers really are. It’s almost like they value their own money, or something.

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Fiat Multipla

I’ve never shied away from championing the stuff I really love, but now, as my first car purchase in 12 years looms, it’s time to pep myself up to put at least some money where my mouth is. There’s one particular model I was besotted by from its launch and which I vowed would be my everyday car at the first appropriate moment.

While the buying public was going gaga for the Ford Fiesta ST, I was trying – in vain – to convince them to nudge up their budget for something far more specialist and exotic.

The stock Peugeot 208 GTI was decent enough, but the 30th Anniversary and Peugeot Sport specials, with their Torsen limited-slip differential, wider tracks, more negatively cambered wheels and focused Michelin Super Sport tyres?

Well, they were truly special. At £21,995 new, the 30th edition (apparently there was an iconic Pug GTI in the 1980s…) was a heap pricier than a contemporary Fiesta for what, on the surface, was a questionable two-tone paint job and another 6kW. But digging only marginally beneath the surface revealed so much more.

Seven years on, you join me amidst my valiant quest for a used example. Flying the full-time nest for a freelance career means I must own a car that’ll a) start on cue and b) not use a bazillion gallons of fuel, factors which my automotive tastes rarely tally with. The 1.6 turbo engine in these 208s is freakishly economical, however, so I’ve a vaguely sensible excuse to get that sweet, seductive front camber in my life.

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The UK got more examples than Australia, but they’re still scarce. Barely anyone bought them new, so hardly anyone’s selling them used. The classifieds appear to be littered with regular 208 GTIs, but I’m having to work the search filters to the bone to sieve out the versions you (well, I) really want.

With 100,000km on the clock they appear to have long since had their funky Michelins swapped for budget rubber – surely sending Peugeot Sport’s fastidious engineers into a dark corner for a long cry – and their ‘Lithium Black’ wheels look to have been thrown wantonly at a kerb then repaired with a Sharpie.

And much like in Oz, everything is several grand more than it ought to be as the domino effect of new car shortages flick-flacks down to the price tags of scratty old French cars that too few people actually dig. I doubt I could have picked a worst time to be so fussy.

But I dearly hope I’ll hold strong and prove a man of my word. We’re car people, and with fuel prices spiralling beyond control, I wholeheartedly believe we need to be head over heels with the car we’re footing the bills for. Otherwise, what’s the point?

A brief dalliance in the Fiesta ST classifieds proved to be precisely that. The poor little Peugeot was an underappreciated hero when it was new, but I’m determined to give it some justice now. Just wish me luck finding one.