To be perfectly frank, driving Subaru's WRX STi to school and work and back was a complete waste of the car's potential.
Even if, at my daughter's urging, I blasted it down the straight at 6h30 every morning en-route to drop her off … and again at her insistence, was forced to sit and rev it in the underground car park so she could get off on the sound of the engine.
Truly, I would have loved to have taken the STi on a rally track, for which it was born, or even been on the sidelines, wide-eyed, as it thumbed its nose at competitors when four-times rally champion Tommi Makinen piloted it around Nurburgring in 7 minutes 55 seconds, setting the fastest lap time ever for a four-door sedan.
In the absence of the above, however, I absorbed my daily mojo by flicking the car in and out of the Durban traffic and occasionally letting loose some of the horses on the wonderful half-mile strip outside my office building.
A mom's taxi it's not - not because of lack of space, which is ample, or boot room, equally cavernous, or safety features, of which there are plenty - but because the engineering on the STi wasn't intended for a leisurely amble up the road and back. You might find it hard not to floor it on the straights, or 'drive it like you stole it', which could turn little passengers into jibbering idiots.
The blistering pace and dynamic handling of this phenomenal six-speed (very short first gear, by the way) car set it miles apart from the crowd. Okay, so my women friends, bar one who's a petrol head, hated the rear spoiler and loved Jeremy Clarkson's description of the 'bingo wings'.
And again, like Clarkson, they weren't blown away by the space shuttle-like range of equipment.
To quote the BBC journalist: "At your elbow there's a panel featuring a number of buttons and acronyms you won't find in any other car. First you choose what sort of throttle response you'd like. Then you choose from six settings how much power you'd like to go to the front wheels and how much to the back.
"Or you can go for the auto setting, which unlocks the centre differential, sending most of the torque to the rear, or the Auto +, which sends it to the front. And now we get to the three-way vehicle dynamics control system, which turns the traction control system on, off or very off."
Like Clarkson, "I pushed and prodded all the various buttons and, having realised they weren't making much difference, put everything in auto and left them alone." Which worked fine for me.
In motion, the car's just awesome. It has a 221kW turbocharged Boxer engine mated to a five-speed gearbox, and boasting 407Nm of torque, is phenomenal on a straight. Or in corners.
Thirsty? Yes. Top speed? About 250km/h. And don't worry, moms, the car has half a dozen airbags (front, side and curtain), as well as IsoFix fittings in the rear.
How to spot the STi? Apart from those telltale four stainless steel exhaust pipes at the rear, the front now sports a squarer, more aggressive nose. The under-bumper air intake is bigger and more angular, and the front spoiler has also been redesigned.
With its wide body sporting bulging rear arches, the side and rear views are more purposeful, and then there's that tall, multi-dimensional rear wing generating more downforce than before.
I found the ride fantastic: the body-hugging Recaro seats were brilliant, and the suspension, surprisingly, wasn't as hard and uncomfortable as I'd expected it to be.
Prices start from R499 000.