Flashy, not so flashy...

[Deutsch]

I'm just curios as to what many of you find flashy about cars, besdies stuff like chrome rims, etc. It can even be particular makes and models.

I pose this question because one of my co workes, who has an SLK350, told me that he wish he had not bought the car because he feels it's just too flashy, of course that's how he feels about it, and that is totally respectable. I however find the car to be not so flashy, just attractive? Flashy is more something that screams attention and asks to be noticed. This is very much a relative subject, but opinions are valued so please share.

[rammie]

I even think that the ferraris have a pure style so something flashy for me would be big ass chrome rims with a nasty bodykit on a japanese car.
I didn't put that much effort on finding a good pic of what I just described but I got this pic from the SEMA 2005 show which seems to be dedicated to flashy stuff.

[SDNR]

It's kind of hard to define. I guess it depends a lot on the attitude of the owner and the "appropriateness" of the car in a given situation. A Ferrari generally is a pure car as rammie said, but sometimes, somehow, some people manage to make even a very dignified car, like the old 456GT, look flashy and crass. Sometimes it's the colour choice, sometimes it's black privacy glass - I's hard to define but there is definitely such a thing as good and bad taste - some people just can't tell when something is just "wrong" - I'd say it comes down to the owner in the end.

[Centurion]

It's really hard to say what's flashy and what isn't. Many swedes are very conservative and some of them conciders and black and shiny Benz or Bemmer flashy.

[SDNR]

I found this amusing article.

As you know, the Audi A8 has become a favourite car of the aristocracy in Europe and particularly in Britain. This article is pretty scathing about the A8's discreet style. He suggests we should all drop the pretence of trying to be something we're not.

He is obviously being ironic, he thinks the British middle-classes should stop trying to play the snobbish games of the British class system, and just indulge themselves with ostentation and vulgarity - like the Americans do so well.

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There’s an enormous panel on the staircase to a restaurant in London. It’s made up of a thousand optical fibres which glow white then blue then white again in a never-ending cycle of ostentation and vulgarity.

Then we have martha Stewart Living, for years the bastion of mellow, mist-kissed summer mornings and yellowy celebrity houses nestling in age-old valleys.

Not any more.

How unbearably American. It’s enough to make a grown man vomit.

And it gets worse because one of the 247 flyers that fall on the floor when you open the magazine bears news of an easy chair that reclines, relaxes, lifts and massages.

I’ve argued for years that if the British class system went west it would be replaced in short order by the alternative they use in Canada and America, an alternative where money talks and the one who dies with the most toys wins.

So now it’s no good having a threadbare carpet but impeccable table manners.

Today nobody gives a stuff if you talk with your mouth full just so long as you have gold taps in your bathroom.

Hello!, which still sucks up to European royalty in its draughty castles, has been overtaken by its rivals Heat and OK!
which concentrate on the more important things in life, like J-Lo’s new pearl G-string and the Corrie stars getting down
and dirty at the Baftas.

A friend of mine came to stay last weekend. He’s called ffffitzherbert, and speaks like Prince Charles so you’d expect his
house to be a cocktail of dog wee, pheasant feathers, goo of indeterminate origin and various 14th-century chairs which are
only held together by the moths and the worms that ate them.

But no. My friend has given away or burnt all the family heirlooms.

All the oak linen chests and the Georgian music stands and the tallboys are gone.

“There’s nothing charming,” he says, “about a worn-out carpet.”

Downstairs in his house you’ll find a home cinema, a screen that slides out of the ceiling and child-proof touch screens set
into the walls.

None of this would have been possible had the House of Lords remained intact.
So long as we were being governed by people whose suits are made of dust and who set fire to their children to keep warm
at night we would still be aspiring to the Harris Tweed blend of natural fabrics and military sludge green paint schemes.

Now though, with the Lords full of bright and shiny media moguls and the Rich List topped by people whose motto is
“I started with nothing, me”, vulgarity is in. Today, the world is a globe that doubles up as a drinks trolley.

So now, instead of having to display wealth by turning off all your heating and getting a family of bats to come and live in the sofa,
anything goes.

Take down that dreary old painting from above the fireplace and replace it with an enormous panel of blue and white optical fibres.

At night feel free to snuggle up on your armchair in front of the fake fire with its scented logs and push a button to ignite the
54in plasma screen.

In other words, stop pretending to be something you’re not.

Fill your stove with Semtex, change your holiday venue from Italy to the Caribbean, kick back and drown in a sea of velour,
gadgetry and monogrammed luggage.

Great, but where does this leave the Audi A8? In recent years this has been the car of choice for anyone who wanted to hide
his cash under a bushel. It didn’t have the brashness of a BMW or the opulence of a Mercedes or the canoeishness of a Jag.
It was subtle, handsome, discreet, tasteful.

And not very good. Oh, it was beautifully made but then it needed to be because on anything other than a bowling lawn it was unbearably jiggly and harsh. And that suited the blue bloods. They were used to being uncomfortable in their big, draughty houses, now they could be uncomfortable in the car too.

Over the years Audi made many attempts to get the suspension right on its big saloon but, so far as I recall, made it worse and worse with every twist of the wrench.

On the new car, which is launched next week, it’s given up so now the driver has to choose what sort of ride he’d like.There are three settings, comfort, automatic and uncomfortable, although to make the last one look a bit more appealing, Audi has called it sport.

When you select this mode the whole car hunkers down on its haunches which reduces the ability of the suspension to isolate the occupants from bumps and potholes. Unless your drive to work involves starting at the top-right pocket and takes you past the black, the blue and the D to the bottom-left pocket, sport is a bad plan.

What’s more, it doesn’t even make the car feel sporty. This is an Audi problem. The TT, for all its good looks, is far from a razor-sharp driving experience; nor is the new A3.

Even the RS6 misses the mark.

Make no mistake, I love this car with not just all of my heart but most of my upper torso and my arms, right down to the elbows, but when it comes to that X-factor that makes a car sporty, the RS6, for all its power and grip, is down there with the Daewoo Tacuma.

And now we have it again with the A8.

You can cover ground very, very fast but there’s a sighing belligerence to the steering and a whipped cream feel to your interaction with the road.

If you like driving — by which I mean you sometimes do it naked — the new Jaguar XJR and the BMW 7-series are better bets.

The A8 has another problem.

For some time now we’ve been told that Audi is a byword for modern, fresh design.

Right.

So why was the dash on my test car finished in two shades of brown?

And while the buttons that moved the seats were brushed aluminium art forms, they were mounted on a piece of beige plastic.
So they ended up looking like Cuisinart juicers on your granny’s sideboard.

And what’s that advert on the television all about? Audi, we’re told, was first to get a car through the 400kph barrier.

So what? It wasn’t first to get through 300 or 500, what makes 400 so special?

It was also first, says the ad, to realise the strengths of aluminium.

And again, so what?

Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to realise that man could fly but McDonnell and Douglas went on to make a better plane.

And anyway, the new A8 is still a big heavy old Hector, especially when you compare it with the new Jag.

Back to the advert. Audi was first to put four-wheel drive on a rally car (but Jensen beat it to it on the road) and was first at Le Mans last year.

It forgot to mention that it was also first with flush-fitting glass, but none of this matters unless Audi’s innovating now.

Which it’s not.

So, the new A8 offers us nothing new, the suspension set-up is a mishmash, the much talked-about design comes in two shades of brown and the whole gently gently softly softly Audi image is now out of kilter with the rest of vulgar society.

A bad car then.

Well, no.

Certainly I shan’t laugh at you when I pull up alongside at the lights because I’ll recognise that you’re not pretending to be something you’re not.

You’re pretending you aren’t there at all.

That’s fine. But the Volkswagen Phaeton is even better at this, and is a better car to boot. Providing my hand could be persuaded to write Volkswagen and $150,000 on the same cheque, the Phaeton’s the large sedan I’d buy.

VITAL STATISTICS
Model Audi A8
Engine type V8, 4172cc
Power 330bhp @ 6500rpm
Torque 317 lb ft @ 3500rpm
Transmission Six-speed automatic
Suspension (front) four-link with double upper and lower wishbones and air suspension;
(rear) self-tracking trapezoidal link axle with wishbones and air suspension
Dimensions 5051mm length; 1894mm width; 1444mm height
Tyres 255/45 R18
Fuel 23.7mpg (combined)
C02 288 g/km
Top speed 155mph
Acceleration 0 to 62mph 6.3sec
Verdict Not that bad, just not that good
Rating