Does it matter if my car is not a fancy ferrari e.g.?

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I think if someone was confusing Grand Theft Auto & real life, they wouldn't be alive very long

Warning - strong language contained in the video below:

Unless you crash.

To the OP:

I don't even own a car. I can afford one but I don't have a license.

I was almost toast during a driving test many years ago and have barely driven since.

Having a car is better than no car. Be thankful.

Going faster than the speed limit isn't inherently likely to cause a crash.

Driving aggressively around other traffic, distracted driving and overestimating grip and/or one's driving ability are much more direct contributors. Once you get above 150 km/h unfamiliarity with braking distances becomes a relevant factor as well, because they increase exponentially. At night, out-driving your headlights can be another issue. If someone's doing a lot of heavy braking repeatedly (say for several km of corners) they might encounter serious brake fade in a typical road car.

But, on a straight, empty road, any idiot ought to be able to drive 200 km/h without causing an accident. It's the judging where they need to slow down to 130 or whatever that poses the bigger issue. It's not the going in a straight line that's a problem, it's the managing inertia once things aren't straight where things get tricky as well as dealing with emergencies that might occur.

But, having a fast car doesn't mean one is going to drive it in a reckless manner around others. People take them to tracks, or choose to be reckless in other contexts where non-participants have only very limited exposure to the risk.

Other times just because it's fast doesn't mean they ever drive it fast. An interesting car can also be an engineering accomplishment.

100% this.

Yes. Looks the same as the one in Only Fools And Horses, except theirs was a slightly earlier one (Think theirs was either a supervan or a supervan 2. Did you know that Reliant developed the worlds first mass produced aluminium engine? They used to use Austin 7 engines and aluminium bodies in their earlier 3-wheelers which were a lot smaller vehicles. To be classed as "Tricycles" which could be driven with either a car or a motorcycle licence (Their main bulk of customers were those who had motorcycle licences who could not afford to pass their test in a car as car tests were expensive to pass in those days)... But to be classed as a tricycle it had to be under 400kgs. Those tiny Smart cars are around 560-600kgs if I recall, as a guide to the restrictions Reliant designers faced when trying to design a three wheeled car. Had to have 3 wheels to be classed as a tricycle and also had to weave in and out of traffic cones at speeds of up to 70mph (Older versions designed around the 60's had to do it at 50 mph if I recall but by the time the Reliant Robins came in, they passed the weaving test at 70, and not all 4 wheeled cars could do that!) to be allowed on the UK roads, so only a few makes of 3 wheeled cars were allowed on UK roads. Surprizing what did not pass! Example is those Honda trikes that farmers used whichlater ecame quad bikes. Neither were allowed on UK roads due to them not passing the cone test. The EU decided to do away with this test and allow lightweight French 4 wheeled cars to be driven on motorbike licences in the UK to destroy Reliant as a company and gave Axam and others massive grants to undercut Reliant to collapse the company, as Reliant was more profitable than the MG Rover group and was the second largest car manufacturer in the UK behind MG/Rover. Awful what the EU did to MG/Rover under the Labour party as well!
But to make a car large enough to carry 4 people incomfort with their luggage and be safe at speed all under 400kgs was quite a task. Reliant decided to use fibreglass which was new in those days, and had a lightweight clever designed chassis, and they developed those all aluminium engines specifically to keep the weight down. Their engines were so successful, they were also used by the British Army to power portable pumps and generators that were easy to lift by hand with a few soldiers. Strong little engines for their size. Only downside whic is also due to the fibreglass body is they were noisy when they were in higher revs. (You think some cars are noisy. Try being in a high revving small engined fibre glass bodied car! When you see people testing those cars on Youtube and saying they are slow, they are hardly revving the engines. My first car was my Dads old 750cc Reliant Robin (Regals before were 700cc or smaller. First year of the Robin was 750cc but they decided it needed more power with the Robin so the second year in production they bored them to 850cc, and the saloon versions with the higher gearing topped out at 97mph, but take it from.me that with the steering boxes the steering was more like a rally car "Quick rack" so anything over 70mph and the slightest turn was a bit too much of a turn at high speeds so one had to make minor adjustments when doing such speeds.
They were not built for speed. They accelerated quickly up to about 45 mph though due to them being such light weight vehicles. The van and estate versions had lower gears for taking heavier loads so did 10mph less in top speed. (E.g. The 700cc Reliant Regal saloons would touch 80mph.. The vans... Well, my Dad did once touch 75 and then blew the core plug! He had to make a temporary core plug out of his tobacco tin and used mastic to seal it to get home. (Oddly, we called in at a house on its own near a junction and an elderly couple living there gave us a container of water as with the temporary core plug not providing a perfect seal, boiling hot radiator water circulating in the engine was coming out with the pressure, so a gallon of water to help us on the long journey home was welcome. My Mum took the people address to later write a thank-you card for this elderly couple and took their house name etc, which she did a week or two later. My Dad, my Mum, my Brother and I were all witness to this. The letter came back with address unknown. She sent another and the same.
This was on a main road some 70 miles from where we lived, but it was in the triangle of a certain junction with another road, so was easy to identify. We even had the elderly couples names which also the postmen of that area didn't seem to know.
So about a year or two later we purpousfully drove to find it, and we found the road and the junction but no house! Strange. No evidence a house was there. But that was the exact road! So we drove on, and a mile or two found the nearest houses so asked there and they said there had never been a house there and no one had heard of these people! We explored the whole area over the years just incase we missed something! I ave ben passed there myself years later... No house! None of us can account for that event other than the elderly people may have been angels. But what about their house and its garden? Is odd because the hedge is there, and the pattern of the hedge... Is really strange! No evidence of a house or any building! Yet that hedge and the junction were distinctive! There was no other main road in the area like it as I have over the years explored every main road and nearly every little back road in that area! And this was a wide main road as my Dad opened his van up goin down a very gentle slight downhill gradient on a wide straight section of road (There are not many of them in Wales)... And we found that road with the bridge and the junction.... But no house!

I think the best answer is it depends on you. Your likes/dislikes, priorities & preferences etc.

Either you’re a flashy car person, orrrr you’re not.

I’ve had some attention getting vehicles (colour flip paint, JDM RHD imports) but never an Expensive or Fast car. The most I ever paid for any car, brand new, was $21k out the door for a 2007 Hyundai Accent Sport with a manual transmission a/c I almost never used. Sunroof was great! 3 door hatchback.

I’ve also had cars as cheap as free, and another for like $900, one for $1300, another for $1700 that I paid for in $1 & $2 coins I had on my dresser lol etc several other cheap cars from $2k-$12k.

If I had to do life all over again I’d have driven Toyota econoboxes forever and banked all the money I wasted fixing broken Volkswagens and other pieces of s**t.

Before I was driving, I got to places by bus or by walking. I still walk to work which is only less than 20 minutes away. There are times when I've been driving and I've hated it when I had to get into other lanes in busy traffic, getting cut off, getting beeped at and so on. I've sometimes thought to myself is it better and healthier to be driving or walking ? I even seem to think that I've done more walking to places than maybe my dad did when he was my age or younger and has nearly always used his car instead of walking since his early 20s probably.

I have to say that the cars that surprized me the most were ones that most people assumed were no good. Volvos (Which in the 1980's were "Uncool" and I was told were slow which when I bought one, it would leave most Fords (Which were popular back them) behind and was economical as well! My Volvo could spin its rear wheels from a standing start in 3rd gear (5 speed manual), and its handling was outstanding!
Other cars like the one I have now... But when we had a lot of snow where our road was snow and then ice for a month and a half, and I lived on a steep hill that some 4x4 didn't make it in those conditions... My little 954cc lightweight (640kgs) Citroen AX with its tiny thin wheels was a delight! More like a sledge with its wheels locked going downhill which was scary (No antilock brakes or power steering). Had a few moments where I had to gently try and get the car to not go sideways round corners on ice going as slow as I could downhill! But the way back up she was outstanding! She was gripping where hardly a car of any type had made it! Only once did she fsil to get up and I was puzzled. Then went the long way home, and got home and remembered. I had two sacks of coal in the boot. Car was front wheel drive!
But I don't think any other car would have done that so well. Unknown to me in those days, a neighbour who we assumed was ok years later told me she had to abandon her big 4x4 Nissan on the hill as she could not get up in the snow! Yet my little front wheel drive Citroen did it everytime!

Is a case that I had the right car at the right time. Only initially bought the car as I could jot afford anything else. Cost £200 and I bought it, taxed it and insured it for £500 which was allI and my Mother had at the time. But what a car!

And the one I have today is good. A little 3 cylinder diesel. Not quite as small and light as the AX as this little car has a Mercadies cast iron engine block.

My dad also had a Robin Reliant. One practical downside was that there was no leg room for passengers in the back. Another problem was that some of the local teenagers were jerks and thought it was great fun to tip it over while it was parked in the street late at night. He told the police but they were no help at all, so he thwarted the jerks by putting a little screw-plug thingy into the tarmac, and fastened the vehicle to that from the underside with a short chain, thus making it impossible to lift the car. As the fix was inconspicuous, the jerks never figured out what he'd done.

Never spent more than £1500 on a car, most of them under a grand. I just couldn't do it. I don't really care. At the moment I have a Peugeot 107 which has lost all the lacquer off it's front and rear bumpers and leaks through every seal. Also has had a cracked windscreen for 3 years which I haven't bothered to get fixed, even though insurance would cover it!

I do occasionally get a bit of envy when I'm doing the school run - my car is by some distance the crappiest looking thing in the car park. But it's super cheap to run and gets me where I want to be just as well as any other car. But it does look a bit shabby alongside those Audis and BMWs. I'll drive it until it's uneconomical to repair and then I'll scrap it, same as I do with all my cars.

I'd be interested in something a bit roomier and more safe-feeling, less tinny, when I have the money to do so. But I'm never going to be the kind of guy who spends tens of thousands on a car, and I don't like leasing or HP so I guess I'm always going to be a crappy car guy.