Matt Prior

‘A state of grace’: what an elegant way to describe having reached acertain peace of mind. One can imagine a cleric or a wellness guru talking about finding ‘a state of grace’, an inner calm, as a contemplative or meditative goal.

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Itwas instead a phrase said to me by my colleague Steve Cropley about not wanting any more cars. A curious way to describe not buying another snotbox - but he is athoughtful man, it should be noted.

Ifyou receive Subscriber Extra, a weekly editorial email sent to Autocar subscribers, you may have read him expanding on this; how he isn’t envious of people with large car collections and how there’s only one car he regrets selling.

Having a state of grace, as he explained it to me, is owning sufficient cars to do every job you could conceivably want and no more.

There are people, of course, for whom that could be two cars, or one, or even none, in the way that I have achieved a state of grace about the number of pizza ovens or bobbins or lizards Town -none in each case being precisely the optimum amount to satisfy me. I suppose I could own a bobbin or two without it adversely affecting my state of mind, but having more than zero lizards I would find, I think, quite stressful.