Car News Articles

I ADMIT IT. I own a people-mover. There, I’ve said it.

Of course, I don’t call it a people-mover. I say station wagon, and only if absolutely cornered will I admit that it has two pop-up seats in the back.

I also tend to say, “We have a station wagon”. This more accurately represents the situation but it also seems to share the responsibility around. It distances me just that little bit more.

I don’t want to be overly defensive. But it’s fuel efficient and it’s about a tonne lighter than the full-sized four-wheel-drives and it can carry 2.5-metre lengths of timber and swallow a whole family and its luggage and … and … and on any practical level it’s the best vehicle I’ve ever owned. Sorry, we’ve ever owned.

But it’s still a people-mover. On any night in some windy scout hall there are people sitting in a large circle coming to terms with the fact that they too are people-mover owners, but the situation isn’t hopeless.

You can learn to love your people-mover, albeit in the way one might love a really good stapler - “Wow, another large stack of paper successfully perforated and held together” - rather than, say, how you might love a curvaceous Ferrari that accelerates so quickly that your eyelids spin back like a pair of roller blinds that have been given a really good hoik on the string with the little circle thing at the bottom.

Do you own a people-mover already or would you consider one if you needed the room for a growing family?

Or is it one car you will never buy?

Tony Davis