FUTURE PROOF
How much choice do we really have when speccing a car, ponders consultant editor Paul
ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING
Cyling through one of London’s hipsterish streets I see this, emblazoned in a cafe window: “Build-your-own or curated salad bowls.” Curated eh? What a word of our times, tiresomely deployed as a fancy dress description for any old take-it-or-leave it combination. High-end carmakers have latched on. You go on the configurator and you find you can’t actually choose what you want, but are instead directed to a combination of black-overblack with black wheels: ‘urban curated’. Or green-over-brown with chrome: ‘heritage curated’. My first impulse is to sneer. I know about cars and I want to pick my own spec: blue paint, dark tan cloth, no options except the brightest available headlights.