Project Petrolhead

According to Aston Martin’s marketing department, a key isn’t a key. No, they say it’s an Emotional Control Unit™. This serves to prove two things, Firstly, that marketing people are massively overpaid and probably spent multiple days thinking up a play on the acronym ECU, and second, that cars can have an active effect on your mental and emotional state.

I struggle to talk about my emotions, I think most men do to an extent, and that can be detrimental to my life. I end up lashing out at friends and family, acting in a way that I wouldn’t dream of if I had better control of myself. The one place where this doesn’t apply however, is behind the wheel of a car.

Road rage is seemingly all too common these days. People are sat high up in their own little walled-off kingdom, more and more disconnected from the world around them. UK car insurance aggregator comparethemarket.com reported that over two thirds of drivers on UK roads admitted to experiencing road rage. We’ve all seen them, people who drive aggressively, go for unsafe overtakes and manoeuvres with barely a thought paid to other motorists. Thankfully, I am not one of them.

For me, cars have the opposite effect, they calm me down. Of course, I’m not immune to flinging on some Motörhead and lighting the afterburners on the Jag’s V8, but it’s not required in order for me to have fun. My car is and has always been my happy place, regardless of whether I’m pelting down an empty, flowing B-road or stuck doing 20mph behind Margaret and Stanley’s caravan as it ambles at a snail’s pace down to Bournemouth.

I often find that going for a quiet drive is an excellent way of clearing my head after a stressful day and will spend most weekends just tootling aimlessly around the midlands. Obviously, I am lucky in that I get to drive for pleasure rather than work, but I still think that there is inherent joy to be found in the journey, rather than the destination and if more people agreed with that, then our roads might a safer, more respectful place.

I don’t know if an Aston Martin branded Emotional Control Unit™ would make me even happier, but if anyone fancies lending me their DBS (preferably in Casino Royale Silver with a manual gearbox) I’d be very intrigued to find out!