Heady romantic stuff, but the only car I’ve ever really loved was a gold Mercedes 280CE pillarless coupé that has so many good memories. It was one of the last with the phenomenal build quality that nearly bankrupted Mercedes.
I bought it in Consett (that’s in Co Durham, southerners) and my then partner disparagingly observed that it looked like something a Moss Side drug dealer might drive. However (thanks to paid relocation) I subsequently drove it all over southern Africa on everything from motorways to hundreds of kms on dirt roads. Did the 900kms from Grahamstown to Cape Town many times, always returning with cases of Mogenhof Merlot and Chardonnay in the enormous boot. Once arrived in CT with the front of the car completely covered in (dead) yellow butterflies. Starting first time on a mid-winter morning 3000 metres up in the Qwaqwa Highlands, then stopping a few minutes later to let a family of zebras cross the road. Trying to drive as fast as everyone on the four lane JHB inner ring road, which is a bit like being in a computer game, but there’s unbelievably steep gradients, you’re 5000 feet above sea-level and your car’s not only tuned for sea level at the coast, but is used to running on 97 rather than the 93 octane fuel that you used to get in the interior. By contrast, the freedom of driving at 150kph on dead straight single carriageway desert roads in Namibia on the way up to Angola while looking far, far ahead for potholes and stray tortoises. Lastly, realising the leather interior was way too hot if you were wearing shorts, so like everone else, got thick Merino sheepskins from a farm in the Karoo(that could get a bit smelly).
Had four MBZs after that, but never the same adventures nor quality of machinery.