Non-believers struggle to understand my excitement at driving a Suzuki Vitara Brezza
My taste buds became attuned to the sweet tang of forbidden fruit via the Gran Turismo video game.
Many a car fan of my generation waxes lyrical about how this game turned them into petrolheads, but the truth is that I loved cars years before first firing up the PlayStation and from a young age I would often remind my parents unprompted, naturally -that the Renault Twingo my auntie owned in France wasn’t for sale in the UK.
But Gran Turismo did teach me about not-for-UK models like the Toyota Chaser, Acura Integra, Mazda Eunos Cosmo and Nissan Sileighty, instilling in me a certain longing for these automotive untouchables.
Being a child, I couldn’t have driven them anyway, but even the idea of not seeing them parked on my local high street was disheartening.
So now, as an adult with a driving licence, I always jump at the opportunity to drive something that I know was never officially sold in UK dealerships; something I shouldn’t be allowed.
Years ago, when I was writing for classic car mags, I found a mad chap who had imported a Ford Sierra XR8 from South Africa and let me drive it for a feature. Essentially an XR4i with a Windsor V8 shoehorned into the front of it, it was mega and felt like an old-school muscle car, despite not looking awfully different to your dad’s Sierra.
This was especially wonderful, because I was gorging on forbidden fruit but nobody else on the road would have known.
But even the more everyday stuff gets me going. When I go on holiday, I typically just select the cheapest hire car possible, but on a recent trip with the in-laws we shelled out on the next model up, which happened to be a Suzuki Vitara Brezza.
Goodness was I excited. It had the mildest of 1.5-litre four-banger mild hybrids I’ve ever driven with a five-speed manual ‘box that was simultaneously hard to slot into gear near the climax yet extremely loose right up until that point.
The car equivalent of fish fingers that are inexplicably burnt on the outside and cold in the centre. But I loved it because nobody I knew back home would have ever tried one.
The thread that ties these cars together is the unknown. As a proper car bore and someone who is fortunate enough to sample a lot of different vehicles, it can be strangely exhilarating to not know exactly which platform you’re riding atop, where the interior dials were manufactured or even where the seat adjustment levers are.
There’s a thrill in not instantly understanding everything about a car, and it’s always interesting to answer the question: are we missing out in not having these back home? Needless to say, the answer isn’t always a resounding yes.
