If you ask someone, anyone, about what they consider to be the defining characteristic of a luxury car – whilst omitting the glib suggestion of ‘expensive’ – size would likely be the next most popular word.
In recent decades, much attention and even more prose has been paid to the growing size of everyday cars. Amusingly, this also coincides with the government announcing that we are amid an obesity epidemic – twenty first century people are getting bigger, too.
Apologies for the immaturity…
Anyway, car manufacturers will tell you cars are growing in size in order to increase safety, the phrase which disarms any negative discourse before the first shot can even be fired. Unfortunately we humans can not claim the same, as you are just as likely to break your arm falling down the stairs regardless if you are skinny or big.
Mild digress aside, what we are trying to draw attention to was that whilst normal cars have grown, luxury cars have always been anachronistically large.
This is simply luxury cars carrying on being luxury cars. The rich, or at least, the motor car purchasing rich have expressed a propensity for liking large cars – so expensive cars stay big. It is all part of the image and grandeur, you see.
In this day and age, many wealthy members of the population live in urban areas – or at least have property there. Unfortunately, cities are not the ideal place for big cars, so issues can arise.
So here is our idea – small luxury cars. We aren’t talking about microcars or any car that’s prevailing adjective is ‘tiny’, but normal cooking hatchbacks equipped with luxurious air suspension and opulent interiors.
Just bear with us for a second and release the tethers of the sane mind. Imagine, a Volkswagen Golf with the interior and ride of a Bentley – does that not sound excellent? A boutique Golf filled to the gizzards with sound deadening and quilted leather and thick carpets. Imagine massaging chairs, seat ventilation, air suspension and perhaps even and electric powertrain to guarantee quiet travel.
Surely, it can’t be too difficult, but readers, this is merely a flight of fantasy. Let us not get bogged down by the tediousness of ‘economies of scale’, or other foul logical prohibitions against such flights of fantasy; for the thoughts inside a man’s head are the only thing he truly owns.
If VW were to create a thinly veiled isn’t-that-a-Golf-with-a-different-badge-on-it-no-its-most-certainly-isn’t sub-brand (think Maybach), then at least some wealthy face can be saved by not having to enter a bona fide VW showroom.
With a Golf’s reasonable size, the whole endeavour would not even be too expensive either, as we estimate that it is the sheer real estate of a luxury limo that also contributes to their enormous price tags. Perhaps even the cows will breathe a sigh of relief when they hear how much smaller the interior of a Golf is.
The most underrated advantage of a ‘thrifty’ luxury car would be discretion. It would be nice to think wealthy people are, at least, somewhat self-aware and know extravagance is not willing smiled upon by vast numbers of people. Perhaps there are some rich folk that already ask their drivers to fetch the S-Class instead of the Phantom but smaller cars are better still.
A smaller car immediately gets the public on side and by this we mean, when was the last time a small car became synonymous with poor driving or wholly disliked ownership?
A small luxury car allows a discerning rich person to blend and avoid the ire of the masses, just don’t turn up to the office and let your employees catch on, lest any points gained for arriving in a small un-ostentatious car will quickly be lost when your employees see you clamber out of the back doors and notice the driver was in fact, wearing a chauffeur’s hat.
Kerbside 