Opinion: Want the ultimate in automotive happiness? You need a boring grey Ford MPV

During my years of pretending that “automotive journalist” was a real adult job, I’ve driven a lot of other people’s very nice cars in some amazing places around the world, and sometimes even crashed them.

But I don’t think I’ve ever been happier driving than I am right now. It’s 9pm on a Friday night and I’m driving a beat-up grey Ford MPV with a 1.0-litre engine, 90,000 miles and a ridiculous number of dents. I’m driving along a nondescript two-lane road in mid-Devon. It’s dark and, being mid-Devon, there are no spectacular views. I don’t care about the speed limit. I’m not blaring loud music on the stereo. And right now I’m completely, completely happy.

(Note to all you traffic cops: when I say “now”, I must make it clear that I am not writing this whilst driving down a two-lane road in Devon. I am writing this two days later but am using the present tense for dramatic effect.)

My two kids are asleep in the back seat. My wife is asleep in the passenger seat. I’m on my way back to my parents’ house. When I get there, I carry the kids to bed and have a drink. My dad asks me if I remembered to look out for the new speed camera just behind the pub. I say “Yes, I did, the new speed camera has been there for 15 years” and all is well.

This dented gray box contains everything that is most important to me in the world, except for a Walter Rohrl pen I stole from a Porsche a few years ago. But this satisfaction doesn’t end there. Maybe… because I have no choice? I think, like many of us, I live with a constant anxiety that whatever I do, I should be doing something else that would be more useful. The tyranny of choice, you know.

But now I have no choice. I can’t do anything but get this dented gray box home smoothly and safely. There are lots of ways to be happy in a car; at least half of them are legal, as long as you wear your seat belt. But if I could ride in any supercar, on any race track on the planet, with a player from the Swedish women’s beach volleyball team as my companion… I pass for now. This car, this journey, these passengers are mine.

This is my last column, so allow me to end on a saccharine, saccharine note. Sure, we care about our cars’ speed, excitement, growl and big-skid ability. But perhaps more than anything, we care about cars because they connect us — they take us to the places and people we love.

And whatever the future holds for cars, no matter how they power them or what they’re made of, we will continue to love them because they will always be there, to free us, to connect us, to get us safely home.