Hidden Overconsumption

And The Allure of the Single-Owner Car

Raising children is one of the greatest prolonged expressions of unconditional love. For eighteen years, all aspects of your life are fundamentally altered as you care for your child without respite. There are no days off for a good parent like you.

Thing is, once you’ve spun the wheel at the Vatican roulette table one too many times, or ‘planned’ your child (a lie all parents tell their little munchkins), your eighteen-year obligation is stamped and signed.

However, there exists another deep relationship of love and care that falls under no obligation and I’m fascinated by those who choose it.

It’s why I continue to own and drive a VW Golf from 2003.

It was inevitable. All the roads led here and those roads were lined with shame and insecurity. The Trojan Jaguar ran so the Golf could fly. I had to prove to you I’m a “car guy”. Believe me, I experience a great joy at roaring V8s and burning rubber.

I’m not a yellow-bellied dork.

Honest!

Anyway, I decided to view this old Golf because it had amber turn signals and a PD diesel engine—what more could a young girl want?

For the uninitiated, these clacking 1.9 powerhouses flood most of Central and Eastern Europe and because nobody found a suitable replacement they just kept going.

And going.

Like the Nazi German fortifications that litter my island, VW hadn’t heard of ‘planned obsolescence’ (yet), and if you had explained it to them, they’d think you were a nefarious degenerate.

When I arrived at the owner’s home, out stepped the managing director of a large architecture firm. After 23 years and 189,000 loving miles in his hands, it was time for his baby to move on. To me. Obviously. This old man was my fool and I’m taking what I can get.

Standing as moral support and mediator for an ensuing painful negotiation was his wife, who, in an attempt to inhibit his emotions, explained how they had purchased a new Golf so the antiquated model must go.

This was no time for sentimentality.

And yes, a new Golf. He knows what he likes and likes what he knows. If you employed me as his imagination, I’d be remote working in Bali.

With his arm outstretched, he passed me a brown envelope containing service history in both English and French. It turns out the vehicle was a motorway mile-muncher for the family traveling to their second home. I marveled at the care and attention in these records, some of which were hand-written and most of which were totally incomprehensible to a monolingual like me.

“It had a new clutch in 2014 by the way.”
“Good good.”
Sellmeyourcarrightnowyouoldfool.

As expected, the negotiation was painful. The car was not worth the £1,400 he had asked for; I knew that, his wife knew that, but his emotion was palpable.


“_____(I care about David’s anonymity), you know we have to let it go.”

This car had become something more than a means of transport; it was woven into the fabric of the family. Letting go of this vehicle was letting go of a capsule that defined who they had been for 23 years. The scuffs on the bumpers, the stitches in the seats, the cracked cup holders each told a story that defined their relationship and reminded them of younger selves—perhaps on the way back from Antibes, car loaded with laughing children and the smell of freshly-baked boulangerie goods.

If he could, I’m sure he’d hold onto this car forever, but ill-fated, it will only continue to decline. Rust, paint chips, wearing rubber and suspension components, pistons and gaskets all lead to MOT inspectors declaring an old car uneconomical to repair. As advisories become urgent, we can’t justify keeping them in our lives and that hurts because once we start personifying our vehicle, it feels like a betrayal.

To keep a car running beyond its expected useful life is a self-appointed task of preservation. To David (who shall remain nameless) he was custodian for its first 23 years of life. To me, I was buying the elusive high mileage, single-owner car and running in into the ground.

‘Underconsumption core’ is a rebrand of minimalism and frugality for the TikTok era in an attempt to shake the stink of the millennial. Costmaxxing. It’s 2026 and I hate everything.

David exemplifies a kind of underconsumption that we often ignore. The Mk8 Golf—the current generation he now owns—debuted in 2019, so he was able to ignore three generations of new features, more efficient engines, and modernised technology.

Why then do we feel the need to upgrade to the new iPhone 17 now with AI nonsense we don’t want?

Buying a car is now a task in tech comparisons because oooo, the new Tesla had a range of 405 miles and mines getting 380 so I’d have an extra 25 miles to get me out of trouble. You know, honey, I’m always saying, “if only I had 25 more miles, I wouldn’t be stressing about my job or my lovely kids, and your father wouldn’t say those things about me.”

They want you to consume but you must hold on.

I’m just a romantic fool—the vehicle reminded me of my father’s Golf, and I’m wistfully nostalgic for early-2000s cars. But David was a man with a big heart and serves as an example to us all. Keep loving your old car for that bit longer, keep showing affection to your old, stinking dog , and please appreciate and love what you have.