The one thing I love about being a full-time motoring journalist more than anything else is the variety. Not only are no two days the same, but the contrast between them can be huge. We get to experience some of the finest aspects of motoring and regularly witness what most would call petrolhead nirvana. We also get incredible access to people and machinery at times, even if it is for periods that never seem long enough.
In ways it is this wide exposure to a massive variety of vehicles that can, as I found recently, start to detract from the expected levels of enjoyment. This became most apparent when I was given the latest Audi R8 V10 plus to live with for a few days here in Dublin.
To any regular person on the street, being handed the keys to a €300,000 supercar with 610hp should be enough to make their heads explode. Now the R8 is far from a bad car, but the more time I spent with it the more it annoyed me, and it was the things that most people will probably never notice. Hopping from car to car week after week causes you to spot certain things, like the fact that the switchgear in one aforementioned supercar is similar in many ways to that found in your common or garden hatchback or SUV, albeit with a different colour. Where the digital dashboard display in the Audi R8 to some might seem like something straight out of Tron, it is already normal to me after having several Audi TTs and Q7s that also feature it. As will the new Peugeot 3008, although neither company is admitting to using the same bought-in hardware.
Obviously the reasoning for sharing such items across many models comes down to cost and that's not something I'm going to criticise the car manufacturers for doing when mainstream models are involved - it is a business after all. Where this practice becomes disappointing is when you see a really special car that is festooned with items from 'regular' models in the range that cost a tenth of the price. There are ways around this; the BMW i3 is a great example of how some switchgear can be used but in a cabin design that is so different that it works.
Before we go any further, yes, I have already questioned my own sanity and whether this is just me being overly anal about things, but I don't think I'm alone in expecting seriously special cars to be just that - special. I'm also very conscious of sounding blasé or jaded. I don't consider myself in either camp, although the very nature of the job does sometimes accommodate the former rather easily. Thankfully there are still cars that come along and cause you to find any possible excuse to drive them, two of which grace the cover of this very issue.
Sadly, it seems that, as car makers continue to fill ever smaller niche gaps in the market, it is only going to become more common to see interiors blending into one generic design while the exterior is cut and measured to suit exactly which boxes on the current life status you have ticked. Cars need to have a brand identity inside just as much as outside, but can't designers, and more importantly the project managers and bean counters, spare us from everything becoming homogenised? Then again, maybe it's just me and others in my profession that notice this trend.