Best Cars We Don't Get

There are many reasons I love living in Canada: its great natural beauty, our multicultural society, free medical care every time I hurt myself doing something stupid, and being able to convince American tourists that twelve people were eaten by polar bears in the downtown core last winter. However, sometimes it's tough to be a Canadian gearhead.

No, I'm not talking about grease patches on your best toque, or getting your tongue stuck to your ratchet set during a cold snap (and anyway, that only happened the once). I'm talking about all the great cars we don't get here. Of course, there's plenty of great rides we do get, but nothing's as annoying as having an amazing European rental car that has no North American equivalent.

If I were able to take a sampling of all the best cars the rest of the world gets, here are my top picks.

Diesel Mini. There's plenty of tiny, hyper-efficient runabouts to choose from, including the very nicely appointed Mazda2, but I've got to go with the Mini Cooper D. Not only are Minis always as fun to drive as they are to look at, but the extra torque from the turbodiesel engine means that you can haul extra weight (for instance, a few more gold bars next time you rob that Italian armoured car). The other thing about Minis is that every time I get into one, it's like stepping through the front door of a tiny hut into the interior of BC Place. How the heck do they do that? Do they build the things at Hogwarts? With a six-speed manual transmission, the Mini D would be a hoot, while also not endangering any spotted owls.

Audi RS6 Avant. Wasn't Audi's R8 supercar at this year's Auto Show a pretty little confection of aluminum and carbon-fibre? Think it was the most powerful car Audi makes? Wrong. Witness the mind-bendingly powerful RS6 Avant: a twin-turbocharged, V10, AWD, station wagon. Yep, a station wagon. If you really want to laminate your golden retriever to the rear window, this 580hp monster is the way to do it, with a crushing acceleration capable of turning lumps of coal into diamond. It's the perfect car to take on a family picnic, assuming your destination is the seventeenth century and you need to warp space and time to get there.

Ford Focus ST. The Focus is an amazing, beautifully designed, fun-to-drive, comfortable vehicle. Oh, not the one we get, the one you get if you live in a place that has lots of vowels and umlauts in its name. Foörd, sorry, Ford has seen fit to build an entirely different entry-level vehicle for the North American market, and it's a great shame because they only need to look at the success of the Mazda3 to see how the Euro-Focus would do here. I'll take the turbocharged hooligan version in tear-up-my-license iridescent orange please.

Land Rover Defender. Having experienced the immeasurable joys and miseries of driving an elderly Land Rover Series III, I have a soft spot for this truck. It's the automotive version of wellington boots and a tweed sportscoat. No air-conditioning? Stiff upper lip, old boy! Mind you, the new ones have a few more amenities, such as a heater, but you've got to love a truck that makes no concessions to aerodynamics whatsoever. Mine would be green, except you wouldn't be able to tell because there would always be so much mud caked on it.

Holden Commodore SS VE Ute. I love Australians. I know it's a bit obvious to say that, as pretty much everybody loves Australians unless you don't like barbeques, or are from New Zealand. It's such a great country, so far away and full of deadly spiders and snakes, and they send all their best and brightest to run our ski resorts. Australian cars are like that too: big and friendly, and my favorite type is probably the ute. Essentially a car with a pickup bed on the back, the Holden is the best of the bunch as it's directly descended from the El Camino. The VE (in either eye-searing green or menacing black) would be my pick as it's the one that comes with a Corvette engine transplant. Nothing could be greater than rolling around with a bed-full of terrified sheep, pulling up next to an M5, rolling down the window, and saying in your best Paul Hogan, “That's not a knoife.”

There's so many left to mention: the Fiat 500 Abarth, the BMW M5 Wagon, the european-variant Suzuki Swift, the Clio Renaultsport 197, the Ford Mondeo from the last Bond movie, the turbodiesel 5-series BMW, the Civic Type R...

I'm going to need a boat. And a bigger garage.