Project Petrolhead

I would never buy a brand-new car. Regardless of the fact that I can neither afford the RRP or be bothered to sign up for a lifetime of finance, modern cars have been forced to put more and more hurdles between the driver and their car. As of July 7th, 2024, all production cars in the EU (and UK) are now required by law to make full use an entire suite of ADAS systems. ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) is an umbrella term for all the sort of annoying beeps and bongs that you might find as you drive. The ones designed by a committee of health and safety obsessed executives and pressure groups to make life easier, while actually doing the exact opposite. Shocking, I know.

Picture the scene, you step inside your factory-fresh 25-plate car (probably some grey, hybrid SUV) and turn the engine on. Immediately, you receive a bong to tell you that the driver’s door is still open – a fact you may be aware of considering you’ve just stepped through it – so you close the door, belt up and set off. As you drive, a handy notification flashes up on your dashboard to remind you that the area you’re driving though has a 40mph speed limit, joined by a helpful ear-splitting, high-pitched beep to remind you that you’re currently doing 42mph. No matter, once you have slowed down to a more appropriate speed, you might spy a cyclist en route to the Lycra shop and decide to drift toward the centre line to see if you can overtake him. Observing that you’re clearly about to have a catastrophic accident, the Lane Departure system will assist you by wrenching the wheel out of your grip and re-centring you in the lane. Marvellous. Frustrated by all the electronic intervention, you look down at the 19-inch TV screen that passes for an infotainment system to see if there is any way to turn the damn things off, only to be greeted by a small pop-up on the dashboard. “Driver Distraction Detected. Please Stay Attentive.”

It’s not just drivers who should be annoyed by all the ADAS gubbins, though. As the systems are required by law, that now means that every car that rolls off a production line (save for those of small, low-volume manufacturers like Morgan, Pagani, Caterham, etc) must now have a LIDAR sensor for adaptive cruise control, a camera for street sign recognition, a camera for blind spot detection, eye-tracking for the driver, a bypass system for the brakes so they can be applied automatically and so on, and so forth. All that means that cars are more expensive to develop, more expensive to build and more expensive to buy. No wonder it’s now possible to buy a VW Golf for £44,000… without options. And it’s not just on the forecourt where buyers are going to be stung. The more stuff that gets piled onto new cars, the more likely it is for things to break, and as any mechanic will tell you, electronic gremlins are always more annoying (and more expensive) to fix than mechanical ones.

What’s the solution then? Simple really. Avoid new cars entirely and go and poke around the second-hand market. Not only will you save a packet in depreciation, but if you shop cleverly, you can have all the reliability and build quality of a modern car without any of the annoyances. But we’re not here for “clever”, are we? So instead, I’d advise you to go out and buy something mad, exotic and financially ruinous. Why not? We won’t be around forever so we may as well make the most of it while we can.