THE CASE FOR GOING NOW

There is always a reason not to take the good car.

The weather looks questionable. The road is filthy. You've only just cleaned it. The destination has a gravel car park. It's a bit far. There's nowhere particularly safe to leave it. You heard a noise last Tuesday that you're fairly certain wasn't there before.

So you take the other car.

This is entirely sensible. It is also how cars gradually become objects we spend more time maintaining than enjoying.

THE BEST CAR FOR THE JOB

Enthusiasts are particularly good at convincing themselves they need the right vehicle for every possible situation.

The nice car is for nice days. The old car shouldn't be subjected to motorway mileage. The modified car isn't practical enough for a long trip. The performance car feels excessive for driving somewhere ordinary, while the cheap car somehow becomes too precious once you've spent enough time making it good.

Eventually you can own several cars and still find yourself standing on the driveway wondering which one you're actually allowed to use.

There are obviously limits. Taking something genuinely unsuitable into conditions it wasn't designed for isn't romantic, it's just a good way of creating an expensive problem.

But most of the time we're not making decisions based on genuine risk. We're protecting cars from the normal consequences of being cars.

Mileage. Dirt. Stone chips. Rain.

The things that prove you've been somewhere.

SAVE IT FOR WHAT?

Mileage has a strange psychological effect on car people because it's one of the few forms of wear we can measure precisely.

Every journey permanently adds a number to the dashboard, and the market has spent decades teaching us that a smaller number makes the car more valuable.

That creates an odd contradiction. We spend years wanting a particular car, eventually put ourselves in a position to own it and then immediately begin limiting the amount we use it because somebody in the future might prefer that we hadn't.

There are cars where preservation genuinely matters. Historically significant vehicles, extraordinarily original survivors and genuinely irreplaceable machinery deserve sympathetic custodianship.

Your 80,000-mile hot hatch probably isn't one of them.

The difference between a car with 80,000 miles and one with 90,000 miles might matter to an advert. The difference between spending three years actually using it and spending three years worrying about the odometer matters considerably more to the person who owns it.

At some point you have to decide who the car is being preserved for.

ORDINARY DESTINATIONS ARE ALLOWED

There is another trap in waiting for the occasion to justify the car.

Somewhere along the way, interesting cars became associated with interesting destinations. Alpine passes. Perfect coastal roads. Famous circuits. Beautiful hotels with suspiciously empty car parks.

All excellent places to take a car.

But you don't need the Furka Pass every time you turn the key.

Some of the best journeys happen because the destination is barely worth the effort. A café two counties away. A shop selling something you could easily have ordered online. A pub somebody recommended. A road you've never driven because it disappears off in the wrong direction.

The destination only needs to provide enough justification to leave.

In fact, there is something particularly satisfying about seeing a car somewhere it has absolutely no reason to be. An old Porsche outside a garden centre. A rally-bred Mitsubishi collecting chips. Something immaculate parked badly beside a tent.

Cars become more interesting when they're allowed to exist in ordinary life.

THE TRIP DOESN'T HAVE TO BE IMPORTANT

We tend to remember the big journeys because they're easy to identify afterwards.

The European road trip. The first track day. The weekend at a major show. The drive home after buying the car.

But ownership is mostly made up of much smaller journeys.

An unexpectedly good road on the way home. Leaving early enough that the roads are empty. Getting caught in terrible weather. Stopping somewhere you didn't know existed. Following somebody else's car for an hour because you're both heading in roughly the same direction.

None of those things would justify buying the car.

Collectively, they're what justify owning it.

A car that only appears for significant occasions is effectively waiting for somebody else to provide its life. A car that gets used creates its own occasions.

WE HAVE BECOME VERY GOOD AT LOOKING

Modern car culture gives us an almost unlimited supply of things to look at.

You can watch somebody drive across Japan over breakfast, scroll through a concours in California at lunch and spend the evening following a group of cars through the Alps without leaving the sofa.

It's brilliant. It has made automotive culture broader, more accessible and easier to discover than it has ever been.

It can also create the slightly ridiculous situation where we spend an entire Sunday consuming other people's adventures while our own car sits ten metres away.

The problem isn't the screen. The problem is forgetting that the thing on the screen is replicable.

Maybe not the £200,000 car or the month-long journey across a continent, but the fundamental part certainly is.

Somebody decided to go somewhere.

That's available to almost everyone.

WAITING FOR SUMMER

Britain doesn't help.

If you require dry roads, warm weather and a reliable forecast before using an interesting car, you have accidentally created a six-week ownership season with no guarantee that those six weeks will occur consecutively.

Rain isn't inherently damaging. Dirt comes off. Cars can be washed.

There are also few things more British than planning a weekend around cars and discovering that the weather has decided to become biblical.

Some discretion is sensible, particularly where salt and older cars are concerned. But waiting for perfect conditions can very easily become waiting indefinitely.

A cold morning, a wet B-road and somewhere warm at the other end can be every bit as memorable as the postcard version.

Sometimes more so.

USE CHANGES WHAT YOU VALUE

Something useful happens when you stop trying to preserve a car in its current state.

The first stone chip is irritating. The tenth is considerably less interesting.

You stop worrying about whether the mileage will affect its value and start thinking about whether you've got enough fuel to take the long way home. Small imperfections become evidence rather than damage. Maintenance becomes the cost of doing something rather than the cost of keeping something.

The relationship changes.

You begin setting the car up for the way you actually use it rather than the way somebody on the internet thinks it should be configured. Comfort might matter more than another ten millimetres of ride-height reduction. Luggage space becomes relevant. A slightly less impressive tyre might make more sense in November.

The car becomes yours in a much more meaningful way.

PUT A DATE IN THE CALENDAR

Perhaps the easiest way to use cars more is to stop waiting until you feel like it.

Pick a date. Find somewhere worth going. Tell somebody else you're going so cancelling becomes slightly more embarrassing.

The plan doesn't need to be ambitious.

Drive somewhere for breakfast. Take the road you've always ignored. Stay somewhere for a night. Meet somebody halfway. Put the tent in the car and accept that you may spend part of the weekend wondering why you thought camping was a good idea.

The car doesn't need a significant destination.

It needs a reason to leave the driveway.

That's something we're going to think about a lot with 10MM. Not creating journeys that look impressive afterwards, but creating enough of an excuse that people actually make them.

Because the best drive isn't necessarily the one with the greatest road, the most dramatic scenery or the most interesting car.

Quite often it's simply the one you actually went on.