On holidays I found time to waste on car mags, especially Top Gear which is in my opinion the most entertaining of the english language bunch, by far. It's refreshingly reliable in political incorrectness (a UK government publication. hooray.) and passion about a good drive.
The June issue has a test on diesel saloons, featuring BMW 320d, Audi A4 2.0 TDI and the "a bit of a wild card but often overlooked" Saab 9-3 1.9 TiD Vector, bringing the writer eventually to the "dinner party discussion point."
"Your accountant drives a Mercedes, and we already know who drives the Beemer [angry, over-achieving real estate agents with a penchant for pinstripe and too much hair product], but who the hell drives a Saab?
Saab themselves would have you believe that the sort of people who drive their cars are fighter pilots on weekend leave in a desperate rush to cross snow-swept landscapes to knot limbs with their outrageously nubile loved ones. But the reality seems to be that 9-3 drivers are slightly self-satisfied types like dentists and middle-weight architects with hard to quantify career trajectories who'll have you believe that the act of Saab ownership has somehow etched their success in stone and distinguished them utterly fron the common saloon driver."
My question now is, which of these groups do YOU, my dear fellow newsgroup user, belong to? Or rather, any thoughts to follow this up?
Oh, their verdict, BTW goes BMW way: Saab is found to be "beautifully designed", "distinctive and refreshing" with "something desirable about", "but that'll seen like a crappy pay-off when the kids pull the interior apart on the way home from your local dealership."
"Buy the Audi and no-one thinks you're flash, granted, but every time some grinning spiv in a 3-series bolts from the lights you'll know that, tosser or not, he's still got the better motor."