I’m not really sure that responding to a column from a British newspaper by a writer that I suspect may not be one most of our readers are familiar with is the best use of my time, but this is one of those occasions where I think I actually have a viable, real solution to the problem posed by the columnist. And it’s a fun solution that reflects some of the core values of this very website, so I feel sort of morally obligated to weigh in. So let’s get into it.
The column in question is this one, where Ms.Rumbelow not only laments about how slow driving is in the UK, but also waxes nostalgic for some kind of condiment that sounds like nostalgic wax, and explores how women are generally not called “losers.” There’s something for everybody in there.
Anyway, the part I’m interested in is the bit where she complains about how driving is too slow, which makes driving not cool anymore, according to her. From the column:
“For something to be sexy it has to risk death, at least in theory. This is why the slowdown is both an excellent idea and the biggest turn-off to cars since Alan Partridge’s driving gloves. These latest speeding cases reveal celebrities pottering about their domestic business, commuting, visiting their arthritic mothers, hardly the ever more desperate and fatal fantasies of the car adverts’ top speeds and mountain passes. Without the wind in one’s hair, Mr Toad, James Dean and Thelma and Louise may as well take the bus.”
Thelma and Louise take the bus! And other silliness…. pic.twitter.com/jpiU6QpWcL
— Helen Rumbelow (@HelenRumbelow) April 13, 2026
Okay, so the reason I’m so excited to respond is that, really, there has never been a more solvable problem in the entire history of motoring! Look what she’s complaining about: loss of risk of death, driving feels too slow, no wind in your hair. All of these can be solved, and solved incredibly well, with the application of something quintessentially British: a Bugeye Sprite.
Actually, it doesn’t even have a Bugeye Sprite; it could be a MkII sprite or an MGB or a Triumph Spitfire or an old classic Mini or an Austin-Healey 3000 or any number of old, tiny, low-powered classic British sports cars and roadsters.
You want to simultaneously risk death, feel the wind in your hair, and feel like you’re speeding without breaking any speed limit laws, all at once? Then, Helen, my Sister in Chrome, boy are you in luck. Any number of old British sports cars will do all of these things, and look fantastic doing it. The aforementioned Bugeye Sprite, for example, makes well under 50 hp but since you’re essentially in a tiny motorized bathtub about a smurf’s height off the road, even 32 mph feels like 112.
And danger? You want the sexy thrill of mortal peril? Oh, girl, are you in for a treat! Almost any modern SUV could run over a Sprite and crush it into something that would count as architecture in Flatland without the driver even spilling their matcha. And, unlike speeding in a modern car, the kind of danger that a tiny roadster like an MG provides is all inward-facing. That means yes, there’s danger, but it’s mostly just to the person driving, not the people around you who may have not expressed such a lust for peril. I absolutely believe in the right to put one’s self in danger while driving, just not anybody else. This is something I practice myself, and stand by its questionable joys.
There’s so very many good and affordable options that can solve this problem, completely. I get that people are bored with modern driving! I get that you may want to speed in your modern, hermetically-sealed Land Rover or Infiniti or whatever climate-controlled behemoth you guide through the streets!
Everything has so much power now that it’s impossible to not feel like you’re holding back, with that unpleasant paused-in-mid-urine-stream feeling that comes from never getting to push a throttle pedal down more than 1/8″. Of course it’s maddening!
But when you’re behind the wheel of a 1600-lb tiny car with all of 50 hp on tap, you’re going flat out everywhere you go! A trip to the long-term records storage facility suddenly becomes thrilling! You’ll show up at your podiatrist or ornithologist or orthodontist shaking from the excitement of merging onto the M5 or whatever they call the freeways over on that island.
Look, I get it. I hate being bored, I hate being bored behind the wheel. But I’m here to turn on some flickery Lucas Electric headlamps rather than curse your darkness, and that’s why I’m so delighted that, for once, this is a solvable problem.
Ms. Rumbelow, you don’t need to take the bus. I mean, you can if you’d like, but you don’t have to. You also don’t have to speed in your modern car, because that solves nothing and just makes trouble for you and maybe could be a needless risk to others. Besides, that’s boring. You just need to find yourself some fantastic little Spitfire or MG, something you can really throw around and ideally with less than 100 hp.
Then, when it comes time to drive anywhere, just wring that little bastard out as much as you’d like, and feel the grin crawl across your face as your hair whips around and that little motor screams.
See? Problem solved. You’re welcome.
Also, I don’t think Mr.Toad had hair.
Top photo: The Times, Sunny Side Classics
In 1970 I drove a 1962 MG Midget from Chicago to Los Angeles in three days, never exceeding 60 MPH, so I totally relate to this post. And speeding that Midget along Mulholland Drive was as much fun as I’ve ever had in a car.
Unexpectedly, Torch has made a point that is perfectly reasonable.
miata is the answer
What really sucks about driving in the U.K. are those damn cameras and the nasty surprise that comes in the mail when you get photographed barely exceeding the speed limit.
Last time I was in the UK, a driver told me she was cited for going three miles — 3! — over the speed limit. She got a 100 pound ticket and 3 points added to her driving record.
That’s state-sponsored extortion right there.
And the gov’t does want you to take the bus. Helen is right about that.
I went through exactly this, after less than a year of owning a “graduate car” (a deeply private-university-student concept that my roommates upheld and that I’ve since outgrown) in the form of a 2-series (tuned by previous owner, claims 400hp), I realized the experience of commuting in a fast car is exactly “that unpleasant paused-in-mid-urine-stream feeling” paired with a constant paranoia that there’s a Matte-Black-Over-Gloss-Black Tahoe under every bridge.
I sold it, bought a roadster with half the power and now driving is usually somewhere between fun and pleasant, I rarely find myself feeling “stuck” behind another vehicle, and I never skip a beat at the sight of an Explorer anymore.
Taking the roof off has that effect. I have driven a convertible ‘Vette, that at the time had more horsepower than anything else that I had driven regularly. I also spent most of that time at or below the speed limit just listening to the burble of the exhaust and the sound of everything as I drove by. I could have fun blasting through first, second and into third gear and just let off and enjoy the rest of the drive.
Absolutely, the warmer months when the top goes down are the best, while the 200hp engine and short-ratio gearbox keep things civil and fun during the Winter when the top stays up.
When the weather’s not complete sh*t, I commute to work on an e-bike with a throttle. My commute’s only about a mile and my bike will do 30 MPH without breaking a sweat. It’s the perfect balance of cheap, fast, fun, and convenient. If you live less than, like, three miles from your workplace and are driving on city roads, it really is the perfect way to commute (weather permitting).
No one has ever summed this up better. I generally commute on one of two 80’s motorcycles with engines over 1000cc. My commute begins and ends in metro Atlanta, and I don’t merge onto a single freeway. This essentially means I’m puttering around at ~30 mph the whole time. It’s been gnawing at me recently, and I couldn’t quite put a finger on why – but it’s exactly this. To stay behind the Hyundai in front of me that is content with going 10 under, I have to only ever breathe on the throttle and short shift like crazy.
Anyways, I’ve been thinking of selling at least one of the old bikes and switching into something more modern and smaller bore. Anyone here ridden one of Honda’s smaller dual sports? I’m currently eyeing a CRF 250 Rally on marketplace.
I never once in my 15 years of ownership, turned the throttle handle all the way on my BMW R75, I just thought it was nice knowing it always had more. I didn’t exactly putter around, drove it to my personal limits, and accelerated like an idiot often…
Tried it once on a 250cc Chinese knockoff Honda clone, just thinking “what the hell is wrong with this handle?”. Not a nice experience.
So there’s also the opposite way of seing things 🙂
True. The gearing/powerband on my Goldwing is much friendlier for around town. The other bike (Kawi ZN1100) is a GPZ motor hitched to a shaft drive and dressed up as a cruiser. The gearing is much higher and the engine is much more eager to take off. I love the power, wringing an old 1100cc air cooled I4 up to 8500rpm is a beautiful thing. But I definitely experience the “paused-in-mid-urine-stream” feeling going to and from work.
I had a GL500 Silverwing (CX500 with fairings), which took some effort to keep up with traffic, but never felt seriously underpowered (~40hp). I miss that bike.
Once I replace the fork seals I’m selling my Hypermotard and going Yamaha WR250R or X shopping.
Don’t blame ya. I gave up commuting on my ST4 months ago. All the Ducati quirks that made it a fun weekend ride just built resentment on the weekday slog.
The author of that article should just move to Indiana… Traffic enforcement in a cash-strapped state is but a fleeting afterthought there. To really drive that point home, every operator license issued in the state has a race car printed on it. Here is an example showing the race car (towards the lower right): https://www.in.gov/bmv/licenses-permits-ids/images/compliant-license.png
She’s driving the wrong cars, but she doesn’t have to revert back to a 60’s death trap to have fun.
My 70mph commute is currently limited to 40mph due to roadworks. You can get a GT86 sideways at 40mph.
My 2007 Europa is less playful, but has so much steering feel and character that it’s engaging at 40mph. Plus it’s low enough that you can’t see a damn thing if you get boxed in by some ridiculous big car like a Fiat 500.
The only thing I own that isn’t fun at 40mph is my bike, at least not on straight roads.
As someone who has both an El Camino and an MGB in the garage, I wholeheartedly agree with the viewpoints expressed in this article.
I can’t wait for the rest of the snow to melt and the rains to wash the salt off the roads so we can get the summer vehicles out for the season.
Absolutely!
When I did tight donuts in the courtyard in my 1963 Spitfire, a door sprung open, because of the flexible frame – and somewhat large british tolerances on body parts.. Extra danger. For free. What’s not to like?
And going 55 in it felt like going 100 in any other more car’ish car.
Should have kept that one 🙂
As someone who had a stock ’81 RX7 and enjoyed “drag racing” my friends in their 2-door Hyundai accents doing full throttle runs to the speed limit, I can confirm that you can have an absolute riot in low power cars at legal speeds.
I can’t wait to wring out all 42hp of my Mini 1000.
For me it was either a Buick LeSabre or Chevy Astro as a kid vs another LeSabre or Ford Aerostar leaving late evening after bussing tables. Back then, even our ’90 Olds 88 had way more power than a Civic SI of similar vintage, so you could always put up a good fight and have fun around 7.5-8 second 0-60 runs.
No kidding. I have an MGA and it’s handling is, uh, thrilling.
Well put, old chap!
New cars are not slow. Traffic is not slow. Both are boring.
I had my old prius at top speed on the German autobahn. A smidge under 200 kph is not to be called slow. The car was very stable and not too loud. But exciting? No sir, it was not.
To get some excitement, compare a car to Colin Chapman’s standards.
125cc Chinese bikes are apparently growing in popularity in the UK. That will be slow enough and scary enough for her. Get up to a 250cc and really live. Maybe a jimney or copen might be slow and fun enough. Or even a panda car.
My wife and I are moving to the Netherlands. A Panda 4×4 is at the top of my list of quirky, slow Euro cars denied to me in the States.
They are certainly cheap enough. Last time I looked out for curiosity they could be had for about €1k.
Ahh, the sublime joy of setting one’s sight low.
:^)
When I was in elementary school, one of my sister’s high school friends had just bought a new MG Midget (circa 1965). She convinced him to take me for a brief ride in the local foothills and that’s still the benchmark ride I use to measure automotive sportiness.
The noise, the vibration, the feeling of being on the road, the tach in constant motion, that English sports car smell. I was too young to know how to drive, but that didn’t stop me from drawing MG octagons on all my notebooks for the next decade or so.
Also, the name Rumbelow sounds like a term coined by NVH engineers during prototype testing: “Well, we’ve got the judder and cowl shake under control, but the rumbelow is still problematic. Maybe different engine mounts or bushings will help.”
I would imagine the columnist took a fair amount of abuse over her last name, unless she married into it. In which case, her husband did. To me, it sounds like an early warning for impending uh, lower GI issues.
But your comment about the Midget and benchmarks really makes me wonder what everyone’s benchmark is or are.
For straight-line acceleration, it was my parents’ 1965 Olds Dynamic 88. There were four V8s of various displacements and carburetor configurations available at the time. I’m not sure which one it had, but I’m guessing it was probably the 350. Whatever it had, you couldn’t just floor it from a standstill without sitting there and roasting the right rear tire. The bigger engines would have only roasted it more.
Sixteen-year-old me (1973) took it out to the local quarter mile a few times and tried to optimize the launch technique to 60 mph. Because it could be so dramatic with a non-delicate right foot, its ~10 seconds to 60 became the benchmark of a “fast car.”
It was kind of amusing when the 1986 Accord LX-i I bought years later managed the task in the same amount of “one one-thousands” with no drama and was at least three times as efficient with fuel. And certainly handled better.
Personal benchmarks could be fodder for another article or series thereof.
Could be worse. She could be waiting for pages to load on this site.
We apply the same low-power mantra to the website servers. Practice what you preach! All the thrill of dial-up without worry if you mom was gonna pick up the phone and disconnect you.
I like it when the pages reload after I’ve spent ages typing out a reply on my phone, and have to start again. It’s character building.
It’s character arranging
Jeez. I’ve never even tried this site on my phone. It’s bad enough on a decent laptop and 20 ms latency and 100+ Mbps internet.
Eh. First world problem.
That condiment is basically anchovy nutella and I think I’d rather starve to death.
It sounds like it’s right up there with Vegemite on the awfulness scale.
Been there. Had that. And Marmite is not much better.
After reading through CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia with our son, he requested Turkish Delight for Christmas. We were able to buy it online and it arrived in time. It was quite the disappointment. About the same as Liberty Orchards’ Applets only a lot more expensive.
But I looked up Angel Delight, referenced in Ms. Rumbelow’s column and it sounds half-way decent.
Angel Delight is good. We have butterscotch, chocolate and banana at home.
The banana one is just insanely artificial. It’s utterly overwhelmingly bananary.
I’d much rather be served anchovy nutella than whatever “Gentleman’s Relish” sounds like.
Hahaha that’s fair enough.
As a 30 years now Spitfire pilot, I couldn’t agree more. Mine is even breathed on to the tune of a good 75-80hp on a good day, and it’s only roughly as fast as a well-tuned Mitsubishi Mirage in a straight line. But when your ass is 3″ off the pavement, you wear the car like a tight pair of jeans, and the handling is best described as “excitingly vintage”, that feels pretty damned fast. CAR Magazine once described the Spitfire rear suspension as not so much independant as defiant, and they were not entirely wrong. Though mine has been shined up there too, with Euro-spec springs and Koni dampers.
I found my ’16 M235i boring as poop once it was here in the States. No fun to be had in that car until license shredding speeds, and far too easy to get there. The GTI that replaced it was far more fun, as is the 128i that replaced that. Was fun running with the bigger dogs on the Autobahn in it though. And blowing off Fiats in Italy.
Hell yea, slow car fast! Also the glory of driving something that isn’t a grey blob SUV makes Torch’s suggestion all the better.
A while back HubNut had a great video about driving an Austin Seven. https://youtu.be/lCKjTp62_M8?si=tHobLKed89RqJxPP Alas, since I was relying on the auto-generated captioning I did not catch that Ian kept making little screams of terror every time a modern car blasted by in the opposite direction in the other lane of the narrow country roads he was driving the Seven on until some friends I sent the video to told me about it. At least even without knowing about those noises of terror it was still palpable about the white-knuckle driving experience, lol.
A few years ago a friend, who has a ’77 MG Midget, and I were talking with someone at a Cars & Coffee event who had brought her first-gen Acura NSX; when my friend told her about her MG the NSX driver said she also had a MG (a late 60s B, IIRC) and that she loved both her NSX and her MGB about equally because in the NSX doing 100 mph felt like 50 mph but in the MG doing 50 mph felt like 100 mph.
Here’s 5 cents, Dr. Van Pelt. This is excellent advice.
I have wanted a Bugeye Sprite since I was 13. Sat in one at a festival and I actually fit, so the dream isn’t quite dead yet.
As for the columnist, go drive in rural Scotland on the insanity that’s one lane for both directions of travel at 60mph. I still get PTSD from Skye to Inverness at night.
I live in rural Scotland.
Skye to Inverness at night sounds fun! At least at night it’s actually easier, as you can see the oncoming headlights illuminating the road. It’s worse during the day.
I live over on the east coast instead but it’s quite similar.
I drive my 1.5 diesel Renault Megane flat out everywhere and it’s absolutely joyous.
I would agree with you but feel I need to explain.
I am American and flew over. We did the trip from Inverness to Skye then back after I had been driving on the other side for approximately 30 minutes before that. Getting used to all the differences, including lane width, made it quite the drive.
Dark, not used to the roads, lane width, etc. made a white knuckle ride back to Inverness. I got used to UK driving fairly quickly, but that drive basically right off the airplane was a bit much. At the end of our trip it became much more normal.
What route did you take? I just made the Skye to Inverness trip last September, but we stayed on the A-roads which were at least one lane in each direction. Also got to see the entirety of the west bank of Loch Ness. Other than on Skye itself, we didn’t encounter any single-track roads. Which is fortunate, as I scared the bejesus out of my family on one of the single-tracks in the middle of the day.
No need to go to Scotland, rural road all over the UK are also stupidly narrow and only wide enough for one car.
Yep.
As a seasoned Scottish driver, I visited Devon a couple of years ago. They have narrow roads AND hedges taller than houses. I was terrified the whole time.
When LJK Setright wrote about the silence and poise of the XJ-S, he said something like, “At 100mph, it feels just the same as at 70mph, so you might as well drive at 70mph.” (the UK national speed limit on dual carriageways), so that might be another solution.
I’m actually about to sell my 600cc sport[ish] bike because – while wringing it out really is fun – things get illegal pretty quickly.
Right now I’m making over a 45-year-old KZ440: it redlines at 8500rpm, so it’s suitable for wringing, and with the aftermarket carbs and exhaust I might be able to make more than the original 40hp.
I dream of riding a CBX. Which I realise is still a 100hp bike, but the SOUND. I came across one in the wild last summer and was smitten.
Woohoo, F1 sounds! 😀
Last year I replaced my 65bhp RVF400 with a CBR600RR.
I’m not yet convinced it wasn’t a mistake.
That’s a bummer 🙁 but you can always backtrack a bit.
I also have a GPz550 the same age as the 440. When that’s mobile again it’ll be a smaller middleweight 4-cylinder with short gearing, so I won’t be breaking the speed limit quite so easily.