Motormouth: Sometimes driving a "slow" car is genuinely more fun than the quick and the aggressive
In this day and age of “ACHTUNG! SCHNELL!” (German for Danger! Fast!) AWD hot hatches and EVs that can bring you into a different dimension with a quick jab of the “loud” pedal, I feel the joy of driving is often lost among the numbers.
Hear me out. I personally prefer shifting between short first and second gears in a Honda FD2 Civic Type R, revving out to 9000rpm on Singapore’s roads, rather than wanting to test out how fast I can reach the next set of lights in an oh-so-fancy sports car.
Perhaps I’m slightly pedantic when it comes to personal driving enjoyment. I’d take a 25-year-old Honda S2000 any day over the latest and greatest of supercars. Hell, I’d pick one over the Mercedes SL65 Black Series and the Pagani Zonda C12 that I’ve idolised since young.
Firstly, with so much torque and power under your right foot in many-a-new cars, you can’t really speed anywhere without risking your demerit points (or worse, the safety of other road users.) Additionally, the more expensive the ride, the more you’d have to worry about other drivers doing an oopsie into your pride and joy, such is the standard of our motorists nowadays.
The FD2 Civic Type R, proclaimed by many (myself included) as the pinnacle of the Type R moniker.
Throwing back to the Type R statement from earlier, I had the opportunity to compare a friend's lightly tuned Type R to a souped-up Renntech-fettled Mercedes-AMG A45S a couple years back. The sheer joy I experienced upon letting that red-hot K20A VTEC crossover into the hot cams hit you just as you enter a tunnel whilst somehow still doing below the speed limit, coupled with doing a spirited drive through some twisties - whilst still being in control because of how the Civic is setup from factory - is second to none. After all, every tunnel blast is significantly shorter if you have a quicker car too, which results in less enjoyment overall.
Probably the closest one can get to a teleportation device - the Mercedes-AMG A45S.
The A45S, sure, is a technological masterpiece with fancy-schmancy race modes, witchcraft-like torque-vectoring and all the oomph you could want (and some more.) Yet, it’s way too fast to enjoy any semblance of a linear powerband, it just teleports you to where you want to be. You don’t get to enjoy the gradual climb of revs like you can in the Civic or something more lukewarm, and by the time you realise it, you'd be done with that fun stretch of road that you so desperately want to savour just that little while longer.
Furthermore, the FD2R just encourages you to toss it into the hairpins. “Give it some more, don’t chicken out” would probably be its life motto. You’d crave for that inevitable dopamine hit when VTEC activates at 5800 revs. (Trust me, it’s a life-changer. I used to doubt “bengster” cars myself, right 'til I popped my VTEC cherry.)
The Mercedes-AMG on the other hand, just rigidly affirms you to the tune of “Mein gott, we have to get there now! Chop chop, let’s not waste any more time.” as you barrel towards the next apex and upcoming set of red-yellow-greens.
All in all, I'd much rather a fun "slow" car that will get me to my destination slightly behind schedule, the tradeoff being the smiles and giggles that I’d get from pushing that car to the limit - without risking my Class 3 of course - which makes it all worthwhile. As they say, it’s not about the destination but the journey, and I couldn't agree more.
Consider this a pitch to those out there straying away from slower, older cars because they don't do the century sprint in sub four seconds. The smiles-per-mile genuinely matter more than your nought-to-a-hundo figures that you'd brag about to the uninitiated over a cup of coffee.
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