Valentine’s Day date night. It’s happens once a year and is an occasion laden with expectation. The last thing you want to go wrong, is your logistics to fail.
Here are five cars that make the best Valentine’s Day rides, for reasons not always apparent – but reasons which are inarguably valuable.
1. BMW i3
If you are a strong conversationalist or somebody who believes that the correct playlist can make all the difference, there is no finer an automotive environment than BMW’s i3.
Being battery powered the i3 cruises in near silence, which means that every word you utter can never be drowned out by engine noise and cause possible misunderstanding.
2. Mini Autohome
Perhaps too suggestive but if you don’t want to spend some money on an Airbnb after a seemingly successful Valentine’s Day first date, this is a great solution.
Not the camping or roof tent nightmare of your youth, Mini’s Italian sourced Autohome kit is a tent, with built-in mattress, pillows and even its own room light.
3. Smart ForTwo
The urban regeneration – or gentrification – of South African cities is an issue, but if you want to impress a date by going to the most fashionable Valentine’s Day venue, the CBD is your destiny.
And anyone who works in the Cape Town CBD or Joburg’s affluent north will know that parking is problematic.
Image: Wheels24 / Charlen Raymond
If the anxiety of having to parallel park into the most impossible of parking bays on a date is keeping you awake all week, why not get a car which is easier to park than anything else.
Get a Smart ForTwo, which measures a dinky 2.69m bumper-to-bumper and will make you look slickly confident navigating into that prime – and probably undersized – parking right in front of the venue.
4. Ford Ranger Raptor
"Bakkies are terrible Valentine’s Day date cars, they are way too macho." Wrong.
The Ranger Raptor is exactly what you need if a Valentine’s date goes way past its curfew and you return somebody’s precious offspring home, many hours past the agreed scheduling.
The 2-litre turbodiesel engine might not sound that impressive for somebody who needs to make a hasty getaway, but with ten gears and 500Nm, it gathers speed impressively.
The moment you see an escape route into the veld or up a koppie, that’s your cue to get away from an irate pursuing family member.
Featuring custom Fox off-road racing suspension, the Ranger Raptor can go where other bakkies and SUVs simply can’t, and at a speed, they’d never survive.
5. Rolls Royce Phantom
It remains the incomparable luxury limousine, but beyond seating which is comfier than any chaise lounger, the Valentine’s Day party piece of a Phantom is its roof.
Starry nights are romantic, but in an urban environment, we can’t really see the stars for what they really are as artificial lighting around us contaminates and overwhelms the illumination effect.
Image: Newspress
Rolls-Royce has a great solution to provide your date with an in-car Milky Way experience of sorts, thanks to 800 LEDs, embedded into the roof lining.
Each Phantom constellation is unique and will make any occupant feel like a star seated beneath. Which the Phantom’s Starlight feature should, as it is a R200k optional extra.