Want to love driving again and do it cheaply? Buy a bad second car, not a good one.

My daily driver is a cheap old Toyota hatchback (an '04 Echo - not the US-market one). For my needs, it is ... fine. In my personal weighting of the Dougscore, I prize quality, value and practicality. It scores very highly in all of those. Otherwise, it is bland and competent. While it is endearing in the way of most small, tough and dependable things, it remains unobtrusive and unremarkable: it is enough. This is important.

Because...

For work, I have spent a lot of time driving a 2008 Citroen Berlingo.

For those who don't know, this is a small and basic delivery van. It is derived from a Citroen hatchback, then de-contented and reinforced. Suspension - rock-hard because the max cargo load is 1300 pounds. Engine - 75hp/92 ft-lb of reluctance. Transmission - awkward and lazy. Driving position - inhuman. Acceleration - theoretical. Handling - occasional. Purchase price - laughable (I mean how much would YOU pay for a a 13-year-old French commercial vehicle?)

Sound proofing - ha.

Yet, in doing the job it was designed for - a box on wheels - it's fine. As a cheap means to transport something bulky from A to B, it's capable. As a "car", it's hopeless. As a car my Echo is far superior in every dimension. And, as mentioned, often the bulky thing being transported from A to B is me. After so many hours, I got used to its shortcomings. They became my "normal".

So, then I step back into the Echo...

What is this luxurious jet fighter?!

I sit, it feels low and slinky. I turn the key, it feels quiet. I disengage the clutch, it feels smooth. I accelerate, it feels peppy. I turn on the stereo, I feels crystal clear. I throw it into a corner, and ... well, for those of you who "get" the slow-car-fast philosophy it might help to know the Echo weighs less than 1900 pounds. It feels, agile and fun.

Intellectually, I know the Echo is an obsolete economy car. Completely outclassed in every measurable performance metric by everything on the market right now. Experientially, this is irrelevant.

What has changed? I have.

Getting used to the Berlingo was largely about lowering the bar. My settings changed.

Because there is no absolute measure for what a "good" car is. It's about the expectations you have and what you get used to. You can see this in so many aspects of life. Drip coffee is so much better than instant, then you have espresso. Colour TV is so much better than black-and-white, then you see a hi-def flat screen. A Nokia was so much better than a Motorola, then you get an iPhone.

The point is that everything that's excellent today will feel substandard tomorrow. Our terms of reference will shift, and to us this will feel absolute. But it's not. It's a matter of acquired taste. Because, if you unintentionally become used to something that's been superseded, then take a small step back towards the present, the sensation of improvement is massive. And it is just as large and just as real as when you go from, say, a brand new Boxster to a brand-new Koenigsegg.

To step from Berlingo to Koenigsegg would probably be a change so vast I wouldn't be able to come to terms with it. It would be like giving a $1000 bottle of vintage wine to someone who drinks moonshine.

However, this does mean I can say from experience that driving a bad car then stepping into a slightly less bad car yields a great deal of genuine driving enjoyment. In fact, I think for many people, their all-time best driving experience is the same: about 6 years old and sitting on a plank of wood that had wheels bolted to it. The brakes were your feet, the steering was however you managed it and the engine was the steepest street you had the guts to go down. And that's about as bad as wheeled transport can be, but the changed from not "going" at all was infinite.

Because so much of enjoyment comes from delighting in the contrast between your baseline and something more. And it doesn't seem to matter where the baseline is set - whether that's a go-kart, a delivery van, an old hatchback ... or a $1 million supercar.