Driving A Car With A Million Optional Extras Has Turned Me Into A Creature Comfort-Loving Wuss
A funny thing happened the other day. I needed to get somewhere, so I jumped in the car - only, it wasn’t the Jaguar XE S we’ve been running as a long-term test car since December, since CT Features Ed Darren had the keys. Instead, it was my own car, a basic spec MkV VW Golf GTI, which meant I reached for the electric seat adjustments, only to find it has none.
“Oh!”, I thought. Then: “Since it’s a cold day, I’ll turn on the heated seats and steering wheel.” But the Golf doesn’t have those features either, and I felt a twinge of disappointment. You see, just a month and a half with this car has made me a bit soft. With about £10,000 of optional extras - including four heated seats (the front ones being cooled too), a heated front windscreen, head-up display and 360-degree cameras, I’ve quickly grown accustomed to having every toy under the sun.
This meant that on the recent miserable winter’s day when I swapped back from the supercharged Cosworth Toyota GT86 we’d been testing - with its low equipment list and super firm suspension - I was bloody glad to be back in the wafty Jag.
We have had a couple of reasonably minor issues which are currently being investigated by Jaguar (full report soon), but driving the XE has overall been a positive experience, and I adore the way it cocoons you from the outside world with lashings of leather and fancy gismos. All while still being able to put a smile on your face when you’re blatting down a good road, of course.
All this leaves me a little worried, however. Does this call my credibility as a petrolhead into question, since I’m no longer happy to daily a car unless it has all sorts of creature comforts pre-installed? Does it mean - as one CTzen recently suggested - I’m getting “too old for this s**t”? I’m not sure, but when I flick the XE into Dynamic mode while having my bum and hands nicely toasted, I cease to care.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I’ve gotta know. Hows the reliability on that XE S? I NEED TO KNOW!!!
You just started to appreciate the finer things, the small details, thats the luxury bug, do you really need all that BS -no, do you want to live without them? - of course not…
Just let us know when they come out with cooled steering wheels - sincerely an Australian
What you described here is why guys like me defend Audi so much even though they seem like bland grocery getters to everyone else on the road. I went from a barebones cloth Saturn SL1 to sitting inside what feels like a ship out of Star Citizen when I’m surrounded by luxurious features, red lights from all the buttons, feeling the air conditioner blowing harder than a hurricane, and the turbo whine coming through the tilted sunroof when I drive through a forest road. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having those extra features. I refuse to ever buy a car that doesn’t have them again.
Call me simple, but I find all of those creature comforts to be overwhelming. They add too many buttons and too much complication for my taste. Too me, luxury cars became too much about the gadgets and electronics than about the merits of the car itself. Think back to 1995. Back then you could get a Pontiac better optioned than most BMWs. You didn’t buy a BMW for the features so much as for the exlusivity and the way they drove. Put a blindfold on and sit in an older BMW and you could tell that it’s a luxury car by the way it FEELS. And not only that, but you could tell that it was a BMW. The way they felt was unique. In my mind, a lot of that is lost in the newer models. They could be mistaken for some other luxury car. And I think that is mostly because what people want in a car has changed. Now all of those luxury features are what people want more than anything and so more money goes into developing those and less on driving dynamics.
Honestly speaking, I’ve never used the heater/heated seats in my car. The weather never gets cold enough for me to use it (30deg almost whole year)… Unless I want to get heat-stroke while driving.
I feel you bro! I had the new Mondeo with all options ticked for the weekend and when i got back in my 6th gen civic i reached for the start button with the keys in my pocket, almost reversed into a tree because i was waiting for the sensors to start beeping….. Not to mention the self parking feature :D
Drove to work in my Seat Ibiza 6k2 from 2000. I wish I had a heated steering wheel. It is so cold outside :x
Nice extras cost a buttload of money, but they sure are nice things to have. I wouldn’t consider a Jaguar as a performance car or even as a track-day car. That spot is reserved for other things. In a Jaguar I personally would drive through half of Europe with only a few stops, as it probably is an amazingly awesome driving experience and has great comfort.
Added weight sucks. Give me a car with AC and power windows. I can live with nothing else. Dont even need a radio or BT crap. Last thing I want to do is talk to someone when Im enjoying a drive.
Cousin of mine has heated leather seats in a Mustang GT. Are you kidding me? No one drives a GT in the winter. As if they don`t burn the hell out of you already, Oh how about I crank them heated seats. My blood is just simmering, I should make it a rolling boil.