Car that was the most fun to drive?

ExRayTed

ExRayTed

ExRayTed

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So I recently got a car I've always wanted - a Jaguar XFR. I'm very happy and it's an event every time I get in it and start it up. Driving it I quickly realised that the car has way, way more talent than me and that no road so far is long enough, empty enough, wide enough etc for me to really enjoy it other than in small spurts.

Now this got me to thinking - what's the most fun I've ever had driving a car in the 25 years since passing my test? This car comes close but is beaten by my first ever car, a mini 1000cc. It was standard throughout with the exception of the front seats which had been changed to bucket style affairs before I bought it and a shiny momo steering wheel. That car was epic fun, proper little go-kart. I could wring it's neck at 50mph and chuck it about all day long. If I had the disposable income and time I'd get another, but sadly I don't and rose tinted glasses etc.

So what's the most fun you've ever had driving a car you've owned? Driving experience days don't count really, although post your experiences if you fancy.
 
Probably my Saxo VTR or my MK2 MX5, both are cars that I don’t really care (or didn’t care in the case of the Saxo) about (I’ll leave it anywhere). But both are far more fun at road legal speeds than anything else I’ve owned since. I really enjoyed the ability to throw either into most corners and most speeds and know I’d come out of the other side the right way up and pointing where I wanted to be.

Just enough power to be fun, just enough to overtake in most situations, and in the case of the MX5, the ability to open up to an infinite view of the sky, with the wind in your hair (which I do on literally any day that precipitation isn’t falling from the sky).
 
Corsa B 1.4 16v. A beater of a car which meant I could drive it like I stole it everywhere. Didn't care for it and because I drove it the way I did, I knew it extremely well and where its limits were. That car was a textbook case of being able to spank most other cars because I knew exactly when it was going to let go. Not many people could corner as fast as I could in that car.

//I've since grown up and drive considerably more conservative now.
 
its a hard one to say, but i have similar feelings, current car is the fastest i've owned but realistically it's too fast, you don't get to really stretch it without attracting plod.

i guess the old mazda 323 was fun, 1.3l and maybe 40 rather decrepit horsepower meant getting up to 60 was quite the task, so you ended up bombing it into corners to maintain speed. going round ungritted housing estates in winter with the handbrake on was fun, drifting at 10mph.

very comfy car too, and for some reason the windscreen wipers were always silent, streak free and clean even with cheap nasty blades and none of this adjustable intermittent timing nonsense.

however if you're a racing driver and your idea of fun is being moments away from death then i can heartily recommend a micra courtesy car with 100k on the clock
 
paradigm said:
Probably my Saxo VTR or my MK2 MX5, both are cars that I don’t really care (or didn’t care in the case of the Saxo) about (I’ll leave it anywhere). But both are far more fun at road legal speeds than anything else I’ve owned since. I really enjoyed the ability to throw either into most corners and most speeds and know I’d come out of the other side the right way up and pointing where I wanted to be.

Just enough power to be fun, just enough to overtake in most situations, and in the case of the MX5, the ability to open up to an infinite view of the sky, with the wind in your hair (which I do on literally any day that precipitation isn’t falling from the sky).
Click to expand...

Agree totally about the MX5. Drove a friends expecting to be thoroughly underwhelmed but it was a properly well sorted little sports car.
 
Clio 197. Not the greatest car by any stretch (dodgy build quality and reliability* hamstring it in that department) but boy was it fun wringing its neck, making the engine scream at high revs and throwing it around corners. In my opinion I think small cars with highly strung NA engines were probably the most 'legal' way to have fun in the past, turbo'd cars of today can get you to all sorts of silly speeds all to easily.

*melting steering wheel, sagging glove box, rattling boot latch, gearbox synchros that ate themselves <30,000 of normal driving...
 
ExRayTed said:
Driving experience days don't count really, although post your experiences if you fancy.
Click to expand...

Kind of the opposite of the thread but in my previous job the boss was big into cars and used to theme stuff like team building exercises around track days/driving experiences, etc. and in some cases it was a bit of never meet your heroes as I didn't enjoy driving quite a few cars I thought I'd quite like (though some aren't exactly in the best condition and/or some of the owners limit you a bit in terms of being able to enjoy them).

One car I actually enjoy quite a lot is the old Golf VR6 - something about the power delivery and steering when on a good road just meshes with me perfectly - not so fun for other sorts of driving though.
 
My MK2 MX5 1.8S, sunny summers day, roof down, blasting around some twisty B roads. Fantastic fun that car, fantastically composed.

Honourable mentions include the snow day OcUK meet also in the MK2 MX5, the OcUK SS meet where I took my Polo and ragged the nuts off of it in the baking sun trying to keep up with cars with anything from 3x to 10x the power I had, and drag racing at Pod in an 90HP Octavia and almost beating an MR2 (the marshals reactions when I turned up in the RWYB queue was hilarious too, they thought I was in the wrong line!) :D

Not actually got many truly fun memories in my other cars. Donuts in my ruined black MK1 Eunos in a car park in a cloud of blue oily smoke was quite funny... And the Corollas are great for thrashing in a straight line, but they aren't great in the twisty bits.
 
My current car whenever I get the chance. Two drives that stood out for me were the couple of hours I spent blasting around Exmoor early one Sunday morning, and when I extended a work trip to Sandbach an extra night so I could come home via north Wales :)
 
I love the F Type as its power delivery is savage, so that never gets boring and when it does more power comes easily and quite cheaply, crank, upper SC pulley and map is 650-700HP, but right now I thoroughly enjoy it and the fact it can deploy the power in cold/wet even in 1st gear is very impressive. Then the handling though AWD, you really have to drive it as if its RWD as that is its handling balance. Then the noise, startup makes me grin, heavy throttle makes me grin and letting off makes me giggle.

I think the F-type is the car that has made me laugh the most, it also shocks passengers the most due to its power delivery and noise.

But I do get your point that this amount of power and traction means your into the throttle for spurts and few seconds at a time, the risk of losing ones license is high in such a car.

As such I will admit some of the most fun I ever had was in a Porsche Boxster 2.9DFI PDK and a newer 981 3.4S Boxster, but in the 2.9 you had to work hard for every bit of performance, in short you had to ragg the living daylights out of the car which made it huge fun and being Porsche it was happy to take the abuse. :D

I am fortunate that on my route to work I get plenty of opportunity to open up my cars. :)
 
My Capri 3.0s

Nope they didn't hold the road all that well - That was the fun.
They sounded great, Both intake (K&N) and exhaust and looked great.
 
Either my 1.8T 210 bhp Cupra R, which was my first 'fast' car

or

my 300hp Evo X which flattered the driver because the computer and 4 wheel drive systems were so good.

Now I drive a German barge :)
 
Rover Mini 1.3i Equinox - still the only car I can really say was fun (despite having had more powerful cars since) - Truly go kart handling (the only thing I've tried that's come close was a VW UP).
 
I had a play in a friends VW Up the other day and I must say it was quite fun to chuck about, and it makes a good noise too with the little 3 cylinder engine. Was almost tempted to pick one up as a runaround because they can be had for 3K now, but I found it just a little too slow...

The later TSI model with a re-map would be perfect, but they aren't quite rock bottom in price yet.
 
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