Want to buy a full sized luxury car? Here are some pointers......

A Jaguar XJ - like no other car....

If you had money here in Malaysia what would you go out and buy? These days I actually believe in owning luxury personally. I do get to drive nice and fancy cars some times but owning one has always been a dream. So how do you actually choose a premium car of your dreams? 

For me it is simple. Heritage, refinement and then ask yourself what Jeremy Clarkson would say about a purchase. And speaking about Jeremy Clarkson, I am sad to hear that the chap got booted out of TopGear all because of a 'fracas' with a producer. I also hear he is taking his co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond with him and they may soon have their own show without any association with BBC and of course TopGear. Well, good for them. The BBC is in some ways like our RTM. More liberal but still a little fuddy duddy as it does belong to the government of England.

This....is actually...

...this underneath it all

Anyway, as for the criteria of 'refinement' in a premium car I'd like it to be quiet, soaks up bumps and potholes with ease so that my daily commute to and from work is as stress free as possible. I want to be cocooned from the outside world as much as possible. That loud exhaust from a kapchai? What exhaust? That lorry belching smoke? What smoke? That stretch of terrible road that MBPJ has not patched up because the council members think too highly of themselves? What pothole?

So this would lead you to buy certain cars that actually cost over RM150,000 in Malaysia. No mean feat as most of us here don't actually earn like what those people doing KPIs for the government want their bosses to think we do. Do you actually believe that the GDP per capita of Malaysia is over USD3,000? Well, these jokers in the government do. But this is besides the point. The point of this article is to explain to you what premium or luxury car you need to buy with your money once you hit that certain level in life. No. A Volkswagen is just entry level premium here. Not a luxury car okay.

So next we have heritage. You would like to own a car that has years of history behind it. This means years of history building luxury and not just run of the mill cars. You could say this means you can avoid Ford, Honda, Toyota, Fiat and a whole lot of others. You could go ahead with Bentley, Rolls Royce, BMW, Audi, Ferrari, Maserati and Mercedes Benz. Or could you?

Now we head over to the 'what would Jeremy Clarkson say' criteria. Quite simple. If you bought a Bentley Flying Spur you'd know underneath it is actually an Audi A8 re-engineered to be even more luxurious. If you bought an A8 you'd know that if could be a re-engineered Volkswagen Phaeton. If you bought a Continental GT it could be a re-engineered RS6 which could be a re-engineered CC. If you went and bought a Rolls Royce underneath it all are BMW 7 series parts too. So in this case it would be wise if you bought a Volkswagen Passat or a Paethon instead of an Audi or  a Bentley? Or would it be better to buy the Bentley and know deep down inside that you actually bought a very tarted up Volkswagen or Audi? But if you bought that Audi would you think that deep down inside you know that Audi cold do better as they've engineered Audi platforms into Lamborghinis and Bentleys. 

It is the same if you went and bought a Lexus as Toyota is all about making things efficient and cost effective. Your Lexus is actually a Toyota in makeup. Or cakeup as it wears a heck of a lot to disguise it. The same goes to Infiniti, which is worse. It has no heritage whatsoever and comes from a Nissan that is not a GT-R. Even large premium Volvos still run Ford's EUCD platform for the moment. So it's a Ford underneath it all. 

So what does that leave us with? Not BMW as they build the Rolls Royce and you'd rather have a Rolls Royce with BMW parts in it. And that BMW 7 series could have been built better if not for Rolls Royce being above it. Buy a Rolls Royce? You could, but people may just call you 'Your Majesty' if you're sitting at the back or 'driver' if you're driving it. Unless its a 2 door version. Then you're just driving a very expensive car with BMW parts in it. 

Aston Martin you say? Well, their current platform architecture harks back from the days when they were under Ford's premier automotive group. They're considered small and in fact, the next generation of cars will be running Mercedes-Amg engines.

Of course you could just buy a Maserati, as they actually use Ferrari underpinings to build them. Hey, isn't that better? I would have to say that this is the best in platform sharing. Both are incredible cars which have heritage that I wouldn't mind being a part of. I suppose a Maserati or a Ferrari would be nice. They actually don't share parts with Fiat. In fact even Alfa Romeo is reported to share parts with Maserati in its new rear wheel drive chassis. This I would feel happy to own as I get something extremely bespoke unlike the others mentioned above.

And so we now end it with cars that are actually shared with nothing else but itself, The first being Mercedes Benz. I mean seriously, when you buy a Mercedes Benz it is a Mercedes Benz. These days it may be Mercedes Benz, Mercedes AMG or Mercedes Maybach, but it's actually a bloody Mercedes Benz underneath it all. Amazing isn't it? So buy a Mercedes Benz if you want that luxury car of yours. 

The second one is actually Jaguar. The aluminium chassis XJ series launched in 2009 has their own bits and bobs. They may be owned by TATA group but their cars are fully engineered in the UK. Buy one and you know that it does not share major components with a lesser brand. A good thing yes?

So there you have it. Buy either a Jaguar, a Maserati, a Ferrari or a Mercedes Benz  if you want a proper luxury car. 

Hope this doesn't mess up your luxury car buying dreams.