Do cars have souls?

This happens to me a lot. Just last week I was in San Francisco, walking along Market Street in the twilight hours of the evening, when from behind me I hear the unmistakeable burble of a V8 barely at idle. As I turned and before my eyes could reach the source of the sound, I knew what I was about to see.

And it was a 1967 Pontiac GTO in Candy Apple Red with the optional Ram Air scoop on the hood that marked this example as the Hi-Output 360HP version with the 400 Cu in. engine. Now that's 6.5 litres of displacement, to you metrically inclined folks, and that engine powered this heavy car from standstill to 60mph in 6.6 secs. All you VW Golf GTi drivers may not think this is much.

But remember, this was a car made 40 years ago. Even the exotics from Europe had trouble matching that performance back in the day. "The Goat" as the GTO was known in its day had Soul. The new 2007 GTO which is a rebadged Holden Monaro, while being wickedly powerful at 400HP does most emphatically not have Soul.

We don't need to go into how the Ford GT40 humbled Ferrari in the Le Mans 24 hour race in the 60s, but the GT40 had soul too. Not A soul perhaps, but certainly Soul. The current Ford GT while being quite attractive is decidedly derivative. The result of an intellectually bankrupt company raiding its history to breathe new life into its waning fortunes. No Soul.

Lest you think I am asserting that only powerful and fast cars have Soul, I would suggest to you that the original Mini designed by Alec Issigonis had Soul. The original VW Beetle had Soul. Neither of them were powerful. They were both built as popular plebian transport and a testament to their Soul-fulness is the fact that they were both built for over 30 years with only marginal changes and were beloved of millions.

The Citroen 2CV had Soul. Even though it had the most awful suspension and seats made of canvas stretched over pipe sections. The large Citroen DS had soul. Not least because the French called it the Goddess. (Diesse is Goddess in French, get it?). The current crop of Citroens are just crap French cars - including the C5.

And this is not just nostalgic melancholy about old cars. The new Aston Martin DB9 has great heaping ladlefulls of Soul. The current Mini has Soul. The Ferrari F430 has tons of it. The Enzo is riddled with it. The Porsche Carrera GT is Soul personified. But the Maserati Quattroporte has none.

The Lamborghini Miura had Soul. The brutally fast Diablo didn't. The angular Gallardo does.
The Morris Minor had Soul. The soporific Marina didn't.
The Porsche 911 in all its incarnations has had and always will have Soul. The Cayenne doesn't and never will.
The BMW 2002Ti had Soul. The 850 had Soul. All M3s have Soul. The current 5 Series is completely bereft of anything approaching Soul. The old (80s) 635 CSi had Soul. The new 645 with its swollen rump has none.

I could go on forever, but you get the point. Soul is that inexplicable, ineffable essence of the car that's either there or it isn't. And there's no point getting all meta-physical about it.You either feel it or you don't.

So the next time you're out and about see if you feel cars with Soul. Write me about what you felt.

I warn you, I will strangle with my bare hands anyone that suggests that the Pontiac Aztec has Soul.