Cars Of Our Lives

Cars are getting safer and more advanced, but have road trips become more boring as a result? Jon Minster remembers some of the cars he’s owned over the years, and the holiday adventures tied up in those memories.

My wife Jess and I recently bought a low-mileage, second-hand Subaru Outback at a strangely low price. We needed more space for the children and their paraphernalia and we wanted something safe and powerful for the open road.

We got all of that and more. The Outback has all-wheel-drive and sticks to the road like a lion on an impala. It has cruise control and a punchy engine that allows you to sail past everyone else when the highway opens up to two lanes. It has more safety features than a kids’ playground in Sydney and it even has heated seats. Do you know how nice a heated seat is when it’s 5° C outside?

All of this is great, don’t get me wrong, but it does take some of the drama out of a road trip. More expensive cars than the Outback already have adaptive cruise control, hybrid engines, lane-departure warning systems, blind-spot cameras, pre-impact braking and a host of other features. Soon you’ll be able to unplug your SUV, climb in, tilt the seat and have a nap on the way to Plett. Where’s the fun in that?

My first car was my mom’s old Golf and I got my driving licence exactly two days before I set off with friends on matric holiday.

(Disclaimer: The cars might be safer but there’s no way I’d let my own son drive from Joburg to Ballito two days after he got his licence. Or even worse, let him be a passenger in a car with some punk teenager in his mom’s old Golf!)

But anyway, back to that Golf. Being a Volkswagen, it was reliable if a little underpowered. The first thing I did was cut two holes in the parcel shelf for a pair of Pioneer 6x9 speakers – all the better to pump Prodigy on the N3 and further distract the wildly inexperienced driver.