The need to beat the others away from the traffic lights are further proof that our emotional attachment to the car hasn?t moved out of the playground. Photo: Darren Pateman
When I was in my late teens there was a TV advertisement for Martini that used to trigger a powerfully nagging, yearning impulse in me. For 30 seconds, it opened up a world of sophistication, wealth, success and happiness, where I knew I must be destined to belong.
I hope that reading that paragraph made you squirm. It certainly made me squirm to write it. Not just because the thought of Martini makes me queasy with memories of youthful excess.
Of course that advertisement drew that response from me when the sap was rising. I was a self-obsessed young person, like all the rest who just knew that I had to ...
In the desiccated cynicism of middle age I know responses like that for the fleeting phantasms they really are. Advertisers continue to try to evoke them, and the reason it's a bit embarrassing to contemplate the effect they aim for is that they do it by reaching into our subconscious and reflecting back fantasies that are there. The manipulation is obvious, its effectiveness the source of endless research and debate.
The advertisers don't create the dreams, they merely dig them out and externalise them. They may not show our more admirable characteristics but in themselves could be seen as relatively harmless .
Where cars are concerned though, they suggest we're in thrall to infantile fantasies that blind us to appalling realities.
In the news business, I often feel like a man on the bank of a river, downstream from some terrible massacre. We barely look up when the latest police media release bobs past bearing details of the P-plater who died on an empty road at 3am, the pedestrian knocked down in a suburban street. Only when the victims are especially young or numerous do we point and talk for a bit — and then we lose interest and look away.
We look misty eyed at the fantasies: a woman who watches the other mums stare at her in slow motion envy as she arrives outside school in her four-wheel-drive; the couple whose off-road choice turns their neighbours into social inadequates, drained of colour; the boy who papers over his family car to make it look like next door's.
Advertisements don't cause fatal crashes. But they do reveal that our emotional attachment to the car hasn't moved out of the playground. We're too willing to accept the relentless deaths, fight each other over who should be first at the lights, and bastardise our domestic architecture to give our cars bedroom space.
Cars are fantastically useful. But we need to think about them rationally, as adults with some iron in our soul, not imprisoned by dreams of steel and chrome.
Cars can be beautiful. Whenever I see a Ferrari, an Aston Martin or a Maserati — all design marvels — I point it out to my kids.
But I know that one day they have to grow out of the infatuation. We all need to.
Source: theage.com.au
Most obviously, there is the Porsche Panamera four-door, four-seater, launched last year. Bez insists that the Stuttgart car should not be seen as a rival; they are too far apart in character and price. But it is the car with which the entire motoring press makes instinctive comparison. On price and get-up-and-go, the Panamera wins. The range-topping Panamera Turbo has a base price of a touch under £100,000 and it would be difficult to load it up with enough options to reach £120,000. Its 493 horsepower is also well above the Rapide’s 470 and Porsche itself depicts the Panamera as a four-door, four-seat version of its iconic 911 two-seater.
The Aston Martin Rapide could represent a "classy five-door family hatchback", it has been claimed.Writing for the Independent, John Simister highlights that the Gran Tourer has the room to fit passengers in the back and front without being uncomfortable.Mr Simister goes on to discuss the styling of the vehicle, with a raised roofline, wider rear and thinner doors all contributing towards giving passengers the ability to move while in the back.He notes: "The Rapide turns out to have the most fluent ride, the most natural handling and the most progressive-feeling steering of all current Aston Martins … it's a joy to drive."And now the whole family can share the pleasure."Aston Martin car hire fans may be interested to know that the manufacturer says that the car characterises its dedication to "power, beauty and soul", alongside space and practicality for everyday use.The Rapide is a direct competitor to the Porsche Panamera, Maserati Quatroporte and Mercedes-Benz CLS Class.Click here to see our range of cars.Posted by Chris Weaver
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