Every car ad you see boasts of improved performance, better off-road ability, increased fuel economy. But will advanced engine engineering improve the quality or duration of your journey to work? No. And why not? Because the advances in our cars have been directly proportional to the decay of our roads and the increase in congestion.
So your new-shape BMW may have a top speed 8mph faster than the last, be 0.5sec quicker from 0-60mph, have 8% less drag and boast a list of advanced handling system acronyms that are all undoubtedly kilometermarkierungpfosted on the autoentwicklungstrasse, but sadly you're never going to appreciate these clever touches.
This is because you're not lapping a test track in Stuttgart or giving it the flat-knacker down a German autobahn. You are on a British road where the only things that make a difference to the quality of your journey in real, everyday terms, are a) things designed for driver and passenger comfort and b) the gadgets you fit yourself - the "aftermarket extras" in the correct pub bore terminology.
Take sat nav. Whatever ESP does for safer handling it won't help you when you're trying to get a junction number from a map on the passenger seat, or trying to follow the "From the north" directions that came with a wedding invitation when you're late, lost and negotiating a twisting country back lane. Sat nav helps in these situations and genuinely eliminates stress.
Car makers would do well to remember this when it comes to advertising their wares. All of them seem to be stuck in the old analogue world where they feel the need to boast about the improved performance of their latest sports car usually set against an unnerving background that looks like the scratchy opening credits sequence for the film Se7en.
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Or they feature a handsome couple throwing their heads back and laughing into the breeze as they cruise an Alpine pass with the roof down. All of these ads have about as much relevance to a real world buyer as a car made of gingerbread (copyright: Skoda).
What they would be better off doing is flagging up the headrest monitors that bring the miracle of DVD to your mesmerised kids in the back. These make driving easier and more hassle free.
As do armrest chill boxes where you can plonk your can of Coke while sitting in a traffic jam, built-in iPod connections that can help soothe you with sound, voice-activated hands-free phones, ingeniously hidden pop-out mugholders and, of course, the daddy of all extras: air-conditioning.
Let's face it, you might be in a Bugatti, but if your air-conditioning's knackered, you're stationary on the M3 during a heatwave, and your engine's kicking out so much heat that when you open your window it's like lifting the lid on a Weber barbecue, you'd swap places with the guy behind in a five-year-old Nissan Micra if his vents were pumping out the chilled miracle of conditioned air.
The truth is that on today's congested and potholed roads where the idea of driving for pleasure has been replaced by the fear of a ticket issued by a speed camera, we don't need better high-performance cars to drive, we need better low-performance ones that drive themselves. All we would have to do is get in, tell it where to go and then relax and wonder how all the essential technology that makes your life easier could have been thought of as "options".