Is it aesthetics? Performance? Engineering? Sentimental value? Nostalgia? Weirdness?..
I could go on, there’s as many ways to enjoy a car as there are car owners and I find it very interesting what people value in what is ultimately a tool of conveyance that is elevated by social and personal values.
I always love cars that are just a little weird, they have features that don’t quite make sense, they have styling that just doesn’t fit in with other modern cars, and they certainly don’t blend in at the grocery parking lot. They emanate a certain incongruence with the world around them.
I’ve never had a fancy car, so it’s the jank stuff I remember fondly on my old vehicles. Having to start the truck by jumping the solenoid with a pair of pliers, that time Reverse just didn’t work for a month so I had to really think through my parking situations, when it insisted on starting in Drive no matter what so I had to keep a brick in front of the tire and then pull it out and jump in real fast.
Anybody can get in a functional vehicle and drive; I like having to learn and overcome the weird stuff. It’s like taming a horse, it’s a bonding experience.
Now that I’m an adult though, I am quite fond of heated seats.
I‘m from Germany, we more or less stick to the driving rules. One day I had to drive through Paris around the Arc de Triomphe with its eight lanes, in a foreign car which was bigger than I was used to, with three other people in it and a broken second gear. So it was either first or third gear. Stop and go for hours, and the French don’t care much about overtaking rules, any driving rules to be exact. In hindsight it was fun, but in that moment I was drenched in sweat.
I had an absolutely slammed golf mk3 K2 edition with the coil overs corroded into that position, it had so much blowby you had to clean the MAF daily, and the radiator fan was connected to a switch on the dash, you also had to smack the dash occasionally to get the radio and gauges to work. I’m glad I don’t drive that anymore, but looking back it was more fun than bad. The Sceptre hot air intake and Borla exhaust actually sounded really good for an NA 4 banger.
Heated steering wheel does it for me, nothing worse than getting in your car and feeling yourself nearly get frostbite for 20minutes holding the wheel, driving gloves help but they can’t be too thick.