John Coleman on Dacia, a measured response.

Recently I had the pleasure of being part of a group dedicated to proving the goodnewsness of Dacia. We made a fairly long essay on the subject and backed out answers up with facts and figures to help make the piece truly credible and I would say that we were all chuffed to bits with how it turned out.

John Coleman on the other hand, was not. He accused us of glorifying A-B cars with no soul which simply exist to be cheap and for one brief, self doubting moment I almost beloved him. Then I started thinking like a real petrolhead and realised that he was completely wrong. Any car, no matter how humdrum, can be a great drivers car and that a car is never made with a soul, it develops it.

My car is a VW Polo 1.4 from 2007 and at the time of its launch it was described by every journalist as a safe, boring grocery getter and that may be true. It might be a car with nothing in terms of performance or fine tuning but to me it has a soul and is the best car in the world. My Uncle used to have an ordinary Vauxhall Vectra but that didn't make it less of a car than anything else. I named it Edward at a young age because it was blue and I referred to it as Edward until the car was replaced and that is the point I'm trying to make. A car, no matter how fancy, fast or Italian it is, will only develop a soul and an individual character after it has lived a bit and Dacias are no different. It's all about the mindset of those who experience said car over its lifespan and not what it is straight off the assembly line.

Thanks for reading this @JohnColeman