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EV transition: Which petrol/diesel car you'd buy to keep for a lifetime

12th July 2022, 14:22 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

The EV revolution is happening now & it's happening fast. Considering this, if you had to buy one last ICE car, which one would it be?

BHPian Naman_Ferrari recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

EVs are no longer the future. The revolution is happening now and it's happening fast. In just a couple of years, a lot of the new ownership threads on this forum will be about electric cars. Having driven a few electric cars myself (the Taycan & XC40), I can happily report that the future looks good. The torque is addictive!

However, the soul is missing. The way petrol & diesel cars build their power as the revs climb, the sound, the vibrations. These are all very different in an electric car. I was watching a YouTube video in which the presenter asked a question:

"If you had to buy one last petrol/diesel car that you would have to keep for the rest of your life, which one would it be?"

So I thought of posting this as a question here and see what cars we come up with. The rules are:

This would be your last and only petrol/diesel car.
You will keep this car for life.
All your other cars for life would be electric.
The car should be available in India.
Does not have to be a supercar but can be. The choice is yours.

Mine would be a Ferrari 458 Italia. This car is the pinnacle of NA mid-engined Ferrari's, which to me is the pinnacle of ICE engined cars. My dream car is the F430 but that's going to be much harder to maintain than the 458 if I have to keep it for life.

That's a picture of me driving the 458 on a track in the UK a couple of years ago.

Here's what BHPian Gypsian had to say about the matter:

Nissan GTR would be my choice. The supercar which can accommodate a small family and not bottom out in Indian road conditions. Also, this car will not warrant unnecessary attention (subjective to each individual) as its counterparts and it is not expensive to maintain as a German or Italian.

Here's what BHPian NH08 had to say about the matter:

It would be my present car: Brio.
Simple, sufficiently powerful, highly reliable, very agile. 8 and a half years old but still as good as it was new.
The mighty, very environment-friendly NGT has mandated petrol cars' age to be 15 years only. So, 6 and half years remain for me to rev the rev-happy iVTEC.

Here's what BHPian ThePoloDriver had to say about the matter:

For me it would be the VW Polo GTI 6c (Manual), the big 1.8 TSI is more than enough for our roads coupled with Polo's understated yet elegant looks that will let me drive around the city without anyone bothering.

Here's what BHPian GreasyCarb55 had to say about the matter:

Well, this is a hard question to answer.
If we're talking Indian cars, then my first choice would be the Zen 1.0 MPFI. The zippy 1.0 engine provides a lot of fun, you can swap in a G13B from an Esteem or a G16B from a Baleno sedan to make it faster if you get bored with the stock 1.0L motor.
If money is no object then the decision gets even harder but I've managed to bring it down to one car, the W124 Mercedes E60 AMG. Now we all know the legendary W124 500 E with the 5.0L M119 V8 that in the Sauber C9 won the 1989 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as the 1989 and 1990 World Sportscar Championships. But there is a better version out there. The mad engineers at AMG made a 6.0L version of the M119 V8 and shoved it into the W124 and called it the E60 AMG "Hammer". Who wouldn't want that?