Matt Prior
Diminishing returns is something I used to understand well with cars. It was a simple concept to grasp and it largely held true: the more you paid for a car, the better it was, although as they got more expensive, they got better more slowly.
A £50,000 car was lots better than a £20,000 car, for example, but a £100,000 car wasn’t so much better than the £50,000 one and a £200,000 car was a smaller amount better again.
Of course, there were exceptions and sweet spots across the market: cars that were never worth the money and some absolute bargains. But the basics were what they were for so many consumer products. You paid more, and got something better.
A manufacturer had invested more, therefore the product was superior and, as a buyer, you would feel it. A BMW 7 Series was better than a 3 Series; a Ford Mondeo was superior to a Fiesta.
I don’t know if I’ve changed or the market has changed or it’s a combination of the two, but this feels broadly much less true than it used to.
Last week I drove home in a bog-standard, sub-£18,000 Renault Clio for a feature that you will be able to read soon. And I loved it. And not just ‘look at what they’ve done for the money’ loved it: I loved it regardless of its price.
It used to take an expensive car to give me all of the comfort and convenience features that I need, but the Clio has everything I can do while driving and more besides. Fine, there’s no variable ambient lighting or massage function, but it’s a car, not a hot tub, and I’d rather not lug a function around if I’m not going to use it anyway.
Then there’s its size. It’s 4.05m long and 1.80m wide, which means it’s more useful, not less, than a car that’s 5m long and 2m wide. It’s easier to park and sneaks through gaps they can’t, therefore saving me time, and that’s the most precious thing I have. If time is money, then surely a small car is worth more, not less.
The Clio is also much more pleasant to drive than most big cars. It had been a while since I drove one, and the road testers told me it was the supermini class swot, but I didn’t realise it would ride with such deftness, be so absorbent, yet settle so quickly – and steer so nicely.
Of course I’d like it to be faster, its plastics to be softer or thicker and it to be quieter, but here some of the things money buys you still apply. Soft-feeling thick polymers and
