The Car That Was Fun Because It Was Terrible

In August 2020, I wrote something that sounds irrational until you have loved a bad machine.

I said I had never enjoyed driving any car as much as I enjoyed driving a Sandero.

Then I explained why this was ridiculous.

If I crashed it, I joked, I could throw it away.

I drove it thinking that a crash might also leave me carrying my own head under my arm.

It sometimes stalled while going downhill.

Because of that, I kept my hand ready on the handbrake.

In the mornings, it might take two or three attempts before it started.

And somehow:

enormous fun.

This is not how product reviews are supposed to work.

Usually the list goes the other direction.

Reliable.

Safe.

Quiet.

Comfortable.

Refined.

Starts immediately.

Does not stall downhill.

These are good things.

I recommend them.

Yet the memory captures an uncomfortable truth:

quality and affection are not the same variable.

Some of the objects we enjoy most are objectively worse than the alternatives.

A cheap guitar.

An old chair.

A slow computer.

A scratched camera.

A car with obvious faults.

They demand participation.

A flawless object disappears into use.

A flawed object keeps reminding you that it exists.

The Sandero, as described in the old entry, clearly refused invisibility.

Morning:

Will we start today?

First attempt.

No.

Second.

Maybe.

Third.

Fine.

Going downhill:

Do not relax too much.

Hand near the handbrake.

Driving becomes less like operating a product and more like maintaining a temporary alliance.

This is very close to the relationship people have with old motorcycles, classic cars, boats, and temperamental appliances.

The machine is not trusted.

It is known.

That difference can create attachment.

Trust says:

I do not have to think about you.

Knowledge says:

I know exactly what stupid thing you will do next.

Humans are surprisingly capable of loving the second category.

The source does not say which Sandero model, year, engine, color, or how long I owned or used it.

I will not fill those gaps.

The useful facts are behavioral.

Hard starting.

Downhill stalling.

Handbrake readiness.

And joy.

That is already enough to ask why danger and inconvenience can sometimes make an experience more vivid.

One reason is attention.

Modern cars remove tasks.

Automatic transmission.

Parking sensors.

Cameras.

Lane assistance.

Stability systems.

Adaptive cruise control.

Keyless entry.

Automatic lights.

Automatic wipers.

The trend is sensible.

Driving becomes easier and safer.

But ease also reduces the amount of conscious involvement.

A machine that demands attention can feel more alive because you are more alive while using it.

You listen.

Feel.

Anticipate.

Compensate.

I am not arguing that unsafe cars are better.

They are not.

Safety is not boring in any morally useful sense.

The point is psychological, not prescriptive.

A difficult machine can create stronger memories because the user has more to do.

You remember the starting ritual.

The sound.

The moment it almost failed.

The workaround.

Competence becomes part of the pleasure.

The owner knows how.

Someone else gets in and says:

This thing is terrible.

You say:

No, no. You just have to…

That sentence is attachment forming in real time.

You just have to press this first.

You just have to wait.

You just have to hold the brake this way.

You just have to know it.

A perfect product welcomes everyone.

A flawed product creates initiates.

This is why cheap or old cars can become stories while expensive, excellent cars sometimes become specifications.

Horsepower.

Trim level.

Options.

A problematic car gives you narrative.

This morning it refused to start.

Yesterday it stalled.

That hill is dangerous.

Listen to this noise.

The machine participates in conversation.

The Sandero entry also contains another clue.

I joked that if I crashed it, I could simply throw it away.

That suggests freedom from preciousness.

Expensive objects create anxiety.

Scratch the paint.

Damage the wheel.

Door ding.

Parking too close.

Where did that mark come from?

The more an object costs, the more mental space can be spent protecting it.

A cheap object may offer a different luxury:

not caring.

Not literally not caring about safety or maintenance.

Not caring about perfection.

That can be liberating.

A car you are afraid to scratch owns some portion of your attention.

A car already beyond aesthetic anxiety lets you park and leave.

There is pleasure in not serving the object.

Luxury usually means owning something better.

Sometimes luxury means being less afraid of what you own.

This principle extends beyond cars.

The expensive phone gets a case, screen protector, and constant checking.

The cheap notebook gets thrown into a bag.

The beautiful dining table is protected from meals.

The ordinary table accumulates family life.

Objects designed to be preserved sometimes receive less life than objects we are willing to use carelessly.

Wear can be evidence of freedom.

Again, there are limits.

A vehicle stalling downhill is not charming in a safety analysis.

It is a fault.

The old entry itself jokes with risk.

The mature retelling should not romanticize that risk into virtue.

What is worth preserving is the contradiction:

I knew the car had serious annoyances.

I enjoyed it anyway.

That is human.

Affection is often disobedient to evaluation.

We do this with places too.

A terrible bar with wonderful memories.

A cramped student apartment.

A noisy street.

A cheap restaurant whose chairs hurt.

Objectively inferior.

Emotionally irreplaceable.

The difference is context.

Perfection is generic.

Memory is specific.

The Sandero belonged to a specific period in which those faults became part of the experience.

The source does not tell me what period beyond the fact that I wrote about it in 2020.

It may have been earlier.

I will not invent chronology.

The important thing is that by August 2020 I could look back and say:

No other car gave me that kind of fun.

That statement becomes even more interesting when placed beside the archive’s many other car entries.

There are cars admired for speed.

Cars compared by price.

Cars desired.

Cars test-driven.

Cars with airbags exploding.

Cars difficult to stall.

The Sandero wins a category none of the specification tables measure:

fun because it was itself.

Maybe that is why people become attached to entry-level machines.

They reveal the difference between status and experience.

A luxury car can be excellent.

A cheap car can be funny.

The two pleasures are not mutually exclusive, but they are not identical.

One says:

Look what this machine can do.

The other says:

You will not believe what this machine did today.

Stories prefer the second.

The morning starting ritual is especially good material because it turns transportation into suspense before leaving the parking place.

First turn.

Nothing.

Second.

Maybe.

Third.

Life.

A reliable car erases that scene.

Correctly.

Nobody should miss it while late for work.

Yet once enough time passes, inconvenience becomes comedy.

Memory edits out the cold hands, irritation, schedule, and worry.

It keeps the absurdity.

This is why nostalgia must be handled carefully.

We remember the personality of bad machines and forget the cost of their bad behavior.

The old car was fun.

Yes.

It was also malfunctioning.

Both can remain true.

There is no need to choose.

In fact, the tension is the story.

If it had started perfectly every morning and never stalled, the entry would probably not exist.

Defect created identity.

Identity created affection.

Affection preserved defect as charm.

That is nostalgia’s little production line.

Perhaps the mature lesson is not “bad cars are more fun.”

It is narrower.

Do not assume the best object will become the most beloved object.

Love has its own metrics.

Familiarity.

Timing.

Stories.

Freedom.

Humor.

The amount of yourself you had to put into making the thing work.

An imperfect object sometimes asks more from us.

What we give it becomes part of what we later think we loved about it.

The Sandero needed attention.

I gave it attention.

Years later, the attention is what remains.

Hand near the handbrake.

Second or third attempt in the morning.

A machine behaving badly.

Me enjoying it anyway.

Some experiences refuse to be reasonable.

Good.