Tony Soprano once said that reminiscing is the lowest form of conversation. And before recently driving my mom’s 1.6 petrol VW Bora, I’ve always kind of agreed with him. Particularly about the people who reminisce how things used to be so great “back in the day”. I’ve always viewed them as the conversational scum of the earth. Words like “nykyään” or “ennen” used to boil my blood. But for a tiny moment a Volkswagen Bora changed the way how I feel about reminiscing. Not enough to make me a “reminisceur” as such, but - for a while - enough to make me feel all warm and misty-eyed towards our recent past.
At a quick glance, the Bora isn’t a car to have that kind of an effect in a normally stubborn mind of mine. Or any kind of effect in anyone for that matter. It’s a one point blah petrol blah connected to a manual bluhhh from two-thousand and blaahh. It has a rear fog-blah and the interior color matches the exterior color choice of none. The clutch, the gearshift and the brakes can best be described as meh and revving the engine is pointless as the only difference it makes is the rev-gauge needle pointing in a different direction. Here’s a tip: If you listen to an exhaust of 1.6 Bora carefully while revving, you can actually hear it whispering: “you had me at 2000”.
At a quick glance, the Bora isn’t a car to have that kind of an effect in a normally stubborn mind of mine. Or any kind of effect in anyone for that matter. It’s a one point blah petrol blah connected to a manual bluhhh from two-thousand and blaahh. It has a rear fog-blah and the interior color matches the exterior color choice of none. The clutch, the gearshift and the brakes can best be described as meh and revving the engine is pointless as the only difference it makes is the rev-gauge needle pointing in a different direction. Here’s a tip: If you listen to an exhaust of 1.6 Bora carefully while revving, you can actually hear it whispering: “you had me at 2000”.
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| 1.6 Bora |
In the early 2000’s it was - as the brand name suggests - the people’s car. The kind of people that don’t want to be seen, heard, looked at, or noticed in anyway in traffic. And by that I mean 99% of early 2000’s Finnish population. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just the way we were as a nation around that time. In that sense a Bora was a very Finnish car. And it showed; our little town of Jyväskylä had little over 100 000 people, but there were 5,8 million of these roaming the parking lot of a local supermarket. The people of Jyväskylä alone bought so many 1.6 Boras around that time, that VW actually ran out of paint to put on their products. That’s why most of them were colorless, as this example here.
But the inaccurate history lesson over, let’s jump back to 2018. To a world where we “need a four-wheel drive” and “enjoy the high seating position”. To a world filled to the brim with Quashqai’s, Rav-4’s and Tiguan’s. A world where nailing an iPad to a dashboard as a distraction is perfectly acceptable. A world where car-manufacturers can then “save us” from their own distractions with cleverly marketed safety equipment so you can keep on reviewing your local McDonald’s on yelp, while you’re supposed to be driving. Let’s take the Bora out of the modern-world-context.
I’ve driven this exact car quite a lot in my youth. After I got my drivers licence, the first couple thousand of my kilometers as an fully licensed independent driving god i drove either this, or a 2.0 307 Peugeot. I remember comparing these driving experiences a lot. The Bora was the soft and wobbly one that didn’t like being revved, while the 307 wanted you to throw it to corners and only shift at the redline. All the controls like the clutch or the steering in the Peugeot were very stiff and they really wanted to be man-handled, while the controls of Bora were made so the weakest old grandma in the most remote place in this frozen north could easily operate them. You could make a full emergency stop from 100kph in a Bora simply by blowing ever so gently towards the brake pedal. Yeah, yeah: the 307 of course was broken all the time, while the Bora needed nothing but a regular service, but that’s another story. The point is I thought there’ll never be a car as dull as a gray 1.6 VW Bora.
But the inaccurate history lesson over, let’s jump back to 2018. To a world where we “need a four-wheel drive” and “enjoy the high seating position”. To a world filled to the brim with Quashqai’s, Rav-4’s and Tiguan’s. A world where nailing an iPad to a dashboard as a distraction is perfectly acceptable. A world where car-manufacturers can then “save us” from their own distractions with cleverly marketed safety equipment so you can keep on reviewing your local McDonald’s on yelp, while you’re supposed to be driving. Let’s take the Bora out of the modern-world-context.
I’ve driven this exact car quite a lot in my youth. After I got my drivers licence, the first couple thousand of my kilometers as an fully licensed independent driving god i drove either this, or a 2.0 307 Peugeot. I remember comparing these driving experiences a lot. The Bora was the soft and wobbly one that didn’t like being revved, while the 307 wanted you to throw it to corners and only shift at the redline. All the controls like the clutch or the steering in the Peugeot were very stiff and they really wanted to be man-handled, while the controls of Bora were made so the weakest old grandma in the most remote place in this frozen north could easily operate them. You could make a full emergency stop from 100kph in a Bora simply by blowing ever so gently towards the brake pedal. Yeah, yeah: the 307 of course was broken all the time, while the Bora needed nothing but a regular service, but that’s another story. The point is I thought there’ll never be a car as dull as a gray 1.6 VW Bora.
And to a certain extent I was actually correct. The Bora hasn’t become anymore interesting over the years as such, but the world around it has gotten more and more disconnected from the roads we drive in. Driving the dullest car of 2002 in the year 2018 actually makes you remember and respect the things we used to have - or didn’t - just a short while ago. Of course we still have amazing cars that are fantastic to drive, but our moms don’t drive them. Our moms drove a 1.6 Bora though. And pondering over this thought, I cannot help wondering if Alex Roy’s recent fears of the mankind's descent into a breed of brain-dead monkeys while in traffic, are just a little bit justified..? A human used to drive a car. And a human still does even if he or she is not as involved in the process. But maybe as long as a human is involved at all, he or she needs to be able to be as involved as you are in a wheel the 1.6 Bora?
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| Alex Roy |
And for James Gandolfini’s immortal soul - my sincere apologies, but I’m going to reminisce just a tiny bit… Remember when the steering wheel was actually connected to the wheels? Remember when we shifted gears ourselves? Remember how your mom was able to drive a manual? Remember how she used to park perfectly straight without any parking aids, even PDC? Remember how she cursed the city office for lowering the speed limit in your home street? And even so, remember how she never crashed or ran over anyone?
-Joona
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