The sell is in how you drive it

Take this as a loose case study. After my Nissan Sentra got stolen I was using a cheap little Tazz (which I quite often referred to as Japanese rubbish. At least now I have German engineering, but back to the case). The way I drove this Tazz made my friends grit their teeth sometimes as I did everything to it, just short of well... ok, I did everything to that car! You imagine it, flying - not ramping, squeezing at high speed through traffic - not inching through slowly. We even challenged German attitudes at the robots and most times won, but that was due to strategy/tactical driving. It's not always what you drive, it's how you drive it.

We did everything in this car when we had it and even though my friends love dreaming of their Ferraris and Lamborghinis the car that they actually want as their first choice for venturing out of student life and into the working world is a Tazz. Fine, they do have ideas of sporting it up and making it look meaner, but that's what they wanted. Not a Corsa or an Uno... a Tazz! The reason?

The reason is that they saw that this car could go through virtually any condition possible to man on the road (and off the road) and it still stayed in one piece, showing the toughness of the vehicle and also how it could handle at various speeds and how you could drive it with the attitude of a BMW driver, but alas... you were still inside a Toyota Tazz.

The idea that sparked off this article was by watching SABC's motoring show, you know the one with Paul Buckby. I've actually watched it more than four times, each time finding myself falling asleep and saving myself by changing the channel. Now, it's a great platform to push Shell's products, but please, we don't need to see a vehicle that has 200kW of power travelling at 2km/h around a corner.

We want to see that suspension work, baby! We're going to be paying the price of a bloody house here! If I buy a house I want to see if it can handle some heavy rain - I'm not living in a world where there is sun shining 365 days a year and for many more after that (hey it would be nice... all the bikini's around). We want to witness the braking power, will we be able to stop in time for that kid that one day runs out in front of the car on the N3 highway near Escourt? Does the traction control actually bloody work? I've seen some top sedans fly off the road and you stare in disbelief at the accident. Is it possible to wheelspin all the way to third gear? Heck, why not fourth?!

I remember a British TV production that test drove cars and the driver was an ex-stunt driver or something along those lines. Anyway, he threw around the cars that were given to him to the maximum. In the end if he thought it was crap he would say so and if it was great, he would praise it to the limit. Of course, if you thought going around the corner at 190 instead of at the 40km/h limit that he took was better than sliced bread (yet he thought it was not good enough), you ignored his comment and took the facts that were just displayed to you. I'm not sure if the program is still on as I don't have a so much more "crap" choice on my remote anymore, but why on earth can't a program like that be done here in South Africa?

What was that? Oh, showing and promoting responsible driving? Here's some information for you then. Whatever you say, people are not going to listen. If they think they are the next F1 driver for Ferrari then they think that, until of course they nearly kill themselves in a cheap road race. So basically you are left with those which are intelligent enough to think "damn that guy really can throw that car around but I know he is a professional and I know I can't throw my R600 000 sedan into a 90 degree corner... my insurance company would go crazy if I did something wrong!"

In closing this article I'd like to stress that car hunters are wanting to see what the car can do to the max! They want to know how far can the car go? How much punishment can it take? What is its handling capabilities like? Could you kick someone's butt if you wanted to? Is the safety good enough in the car to protect me from idiots that don't know how to drive safely?

It's important to just know you can, you don't have to test it all yourself... but just the thought of it and witnessing the abilities on the TV program before you bought the car... just makes you feel more powerful and happy with your purchase. Isn't that what car manufacturers want their customers to feel like about their products, underneath all the facial stuff?