Once upon a time, some years ago, I was involved with a pop star. No, not an Idols contestant, but a proper pop star.
A national treasure someone once called her – although the pop star has long been succeeded by my current partner who's so deep in my heart that sometimes I think she helped build it. A partner whose cerebral serenity wins me anew each day.
The point of this sort-of name-dropping is that I once asked the pop star about the instantly recognisable thing.
And wherever we went – whether it was on a day hike in the Drakensberg or to sit at the back of a shopping-mall chain restaurant on a Sunday evening – someone would come over. For a photo, an autograph, a chat about her last album. That sort of thing.
Was it nice I asked? Only sometimes. Just sometimes, she said.
But not really – and I'm paraphrasing here – when you're in the veggie section in Woolies on a sullen Tuesday afternoon trying to grab some brinjals, and you haven't done your make up properly.
Not when you're scurrying through the airport to make your flight, and your hair is flying everywhere. Although fair play to her she was always gracious and accommodating to fans.
It's like that with cars. Sometimes – just sometimes – it's nice to get the attention and engagement that, say, a Mercedes-AMG GT warrants. To use a random example.
But a lot of the time it's desirable to have a car that's quietly elegant, finely engineered, and borderline low-key. The hallmark of the ultimate servant.
Now in the South African context that features dissolving roads, an SUV is close to essential.
You need something with the suspension travel, ground clearance, and high-profile tyres capable of soaking up the poxiest surfaces and potholes, while giving a cushion-y ride, and that much-hyped commanding driving position.
Self-shifting transmission is ideal. This business of changing gears yourself on the daily grind, and on anything less than a pollen-spattered summer's day on a snaking country road in a charming roadster is just nonsense. Unless you have budgetary constraints, and are buying at the lower end of the market.
South Africa is also the most unequal society on earth, at least according to the World Bank. Our Gini co-efficient is terrible.
So something – and it doesn't matter how well engineered – with a self-consciously prestigious badge that serves to telegraph your ascent of the socio-economic ladder is not always ideal. And let it be said that just by virtue of having a private car in this country, socio-economically speaking you're already pretty high up that ladder.
Plus it needs to be a Goldilocks size. Big enough to comfortably seat four, maybe five plus luggage.
But not so big as to be a challenging leviathan to park at shopping malls, and place on narrow roads.
It needs to be capable of adequate progress, too. But for regular use horizon-bending performance is futile. I am daily dispatched on our roads by the drivers of vastly powerful, vastly expensive machines. This leads me to question the need for performance that does anything more than take you from rest to 100km/h in, say, a bit under 10 seconds, and to a bit over 200km/h, tops.
If you do need to travel faster, perhaps your time management needs fine-tuning. Perhaps you're an altruist bent on not robbing others of the sunshine of your presence. Perhaps you haven't considered that by virtue of travelling at high speed in your prestige-mobile, you're minimising the time that other road users have to marvel at the sheer wonder of you.
Plus in an age of big data, the harvesting thereof, and an omnipresent electronic Big Brother, understatement will become the new luxury.
So then crunching all these requirements and chucking in a large dose of subjectivity – for vehicles are emotive things, of course – leaves us with the best car in the world.
It's the Mazda CX-5. Notably the 2.2DE AWD Akera flagship.
Its Kodo design is sharp and slick but never ostentatious and outrageous.
Its quality – perceived and other – glitters in the firmament. Its SkyActiv technology is more proof that when it comes to the Internal Combustion Engine, little (comparatively speaking) Mazda is out there at the forefront.
From its turbodiesel mill you get 140kW and 450Nm at 2000rpm, all mated to a six-speed auto, if you need to know.
Equipment levels are superb from adaptive LED headlamps to sat nav, and there's also a whole raft of standard electronic safety kit. Lane-keeping assist, city-braking assist, lane-departure warning. That sort of thing – which you'd pay big for as options on many a competitor.
Best of all, Mazda – and the CX-5 – have quietly crept from being fringe players to making some of the best cars in the business. Driving the Akera – or any other the other seven lesser models in the CX-5 line-up – leaves you feeling big and grown up and quietly confident. Happy to helm something willing and able to excel without suing for attention like a campaigning politician.
And the Akera is yours for R571 300. I think that's a good price.
If you have the money, keep the extroverted metal for the weekend – like the 1967 Pontiac Firebird convertible or the Mercedes SL (R107) I dream of.
But for daily use my fantasy fleet would have to include a Mazda CX-5 Akera.
You see, right now, and in the South African context at least, it really is the best car in the world.
