I usually write about travelling, adventure and surfing and this piece is not about that. But there is a link: there is some travelling involved, the kind of travelling I really don’t like, but which I do the most of: commuting to work.

When I look at the cars around me here in Cape Town, a city like so many the world over where poverty is visible almost everywhere, I am struck by the numerous expensive vehicles on the road. Most of these cars know only one route: to the office and back. I doubt that the drivers get much satisfaction from their driving experience, because they have very little driving freedom. They can’t go fast because of the congestion and the roads are not exactly challenging thoroughfares either. Yet every second car is some kind of performance machine designed to beat vast fields of competitors.

Nowadays it is no longer enough to drive a luxury car either, you have to have some kind of SUV. Not that you are planning to go anywhere wild where you need a rugged vehicle, you just need to impress or intimidate other road users. The new gas guzzling SUV’s that we see these days are clearly not designed to go off-road. The expensive paint jobs, artfully contoured bodywork and plush interiors don’t give the impression that these roadsters would tolerate a country track very well.

So why do people drive these expensive cars when all they really need is a bog standard sedan? To me, all you are doing when you drive around in one of these huge cars is to say, “Look at me! I have lots of money! I don’t need this car, it’s helluva expensive and it continues to cost me huge amounts of money in insurance, tax and maintenance, but hey, I’ve got the dosh! I could have given some of the money I so needlessly spend on this piece of bragging material to help somebody to improve his life, but I’d rather waste it. Fuck the poor.”

If somebody would walk around at a party shouting about how much money he has, we’d say he’s a wanker. But if he effectively does the same thing by showing off the unnecessarily expensive car he has, it is acceptable. I don’t understand this way of thinking.

I know, I also don’t drive the cheapest car available. I could have gone for a model from a less reputable manufacturer, something smaller and then donated the difference in price to charity. We can always improve on our ethics. So, in a sense I have to include myself with the wankers in the luxury SUV’s. But it’s a matter of degree. Spending the kind of money that would feed a family on car installments every month just seems wrong to me when you don’t need that car. If you are going to be throwing away money, why not rather give it to someone who could really do with a little extra?

You might ask, where will it end? Why am I not donating all my spare cash to charity? And yes, I do feel guilty about living well while others are starving. All I can say is that I think that wasting money just to impress others is taking it too far for me.

Is keeping up appearances really worth that much?