Old vs New car
Just after 15:00, a beautiful autumn sunset, perfect traffic conditions and around 4 hours on the Swedish main road E4. A full tank of diesel and two nights of proper sleep. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was just smiling in a state of total relaxation. This is what driving is all about. And I haven’t felt it this strongly in years. The W124 has finally arrived in my garage.
I suppose it has something to do with contrast. To travel is an extremely well-defined problem with instant feedback. You start at point A, and you are done when you arrive at point B. You never have to wait for years to get proper feedback on the decisions you take. Problem solving generates good feelings. If you read between the lines, you might see that the above strengths are the exact opposite to life as a civil engineer, especially one specialized in acoustics. A building takes years from start to finish, and you rarely know in advance how well your proposed solutions will work. And you won’t know whether you did a good job until the building has been occupied for a long time and no one has complained. For most of us, I think it is important to find some kind of activity or hobby that can replenish the missing factors that you can’t get from your daily chores or work. For me, driving has always been one such activity and a very effective one too.
As properly pointed out by my wife, it is definitely relaxing to be alone in a car for a couple of hours with no screaming kids around you. Point taken. She’s a stay-at-home mom now for a year and I never experience that kind of long-term exposure to the kids, being around them 24/7. My work is stressful sometimes of course, and to finally hang around with the kids is mostly relaxing for me, even when they scream for whatever reason. I consider kids also as a very well-defined problem with instant feedback. But everything in moderation, I guess… I certainly get some variation, which helps.
My journey from Kalix to Umeå was also one of rediscovery. A W124 can be considered the peak of automotive engineering. It has got all the bells and whistles that you really need and want, and none of the distractions. You got ABS, Airbag and Aircon which are the three big ones. Come to think of it, every single button, lever or function in that car serves a specific purpose that is related to the driving experience. Right now, I cannot think of a single pointless feature in the car, not even a nice-to-have! It is pure. Compared to my modern car, a Superb L&K, which is also a great car in another way, the difference is profound. There are so many features in the car that I could easily start a long list with features and functions I could easily do without. Sure, many of them are nice-to-have, but one cannot deny that they make things unnecessarily complex, and steal focus from the driving experience. Just imagine how many functions you can fit in a big touch screen compared to the wooden panel on a W124 with a physical button for exactly everything! The possibilities are infinite vs finite. And if you have a finite domain, the design choices will reflect that. There is no room for unnecessary stuff. This, I think, is precisely why the driving experience is so very different.
In the W124 I will never have to select a profile for the steering wheel response, damper settings, DSG, adaptive lights, etc… in an infinite list. All of these parameters can be fun to tweak around with if you are a tinkerer (like me) but they can all be done in the W124 using the basic driver controls. Usually, it is just about adaptation of your speed to the current traffic conditions. A huge part of this is selecting the proper gear with the stick shifter. The manual transmission (MT) is always present in your mind, and it does make you more focused on the driving. One could certainly argue that safety is a crucial factor on why to stay away from old cars. But look at it this way; Yes the older car isn’t as safe. But if you reduce speed accordingly and are more involved in the driving, does that not compensate for the bells and whistles on the new car? It is analogous to the fact that an AWD car is less safe in winter conditions than a 2WD car. Why? Because the AWD is so good that you will drive faster than the road conditions allow. In a 2WD car, you notice that there is ice on the road as soon as you touch the throttle, and this makes you adjust speed accordingly. Just ask any insurance company, they have the statistics. I feel exactly the same way when comparing my extremely competent modern car to the W124. When driving home I noticed that I was driving a lot slower than usual and in general, the tempo is a lot lower. I don’t care about overtaking in the same way either. If a moose jumps in front of my car, I will certainly have a better chance in the Merc than in the Skoda, in which I would likely have at least 10-20 km/h more on the speedo. That is several car lengths in stopping distance even with several decades of age difference between the cars, and that is what determines whether you hit the animal or not. Consequently, maybe the W124 isn’t too bad on the safety side either? I love this car more every time I get behind the wheel and i can’t wait to go for another drive.