What Cars Have Taught Me About Life — A Personal Essay
I want to tell you something that has nothing to do with horsepower figures, fuel efficiency numbers, or feature comparisons.
I want to tell you what cars have actually taught me about life.
I am 23 years old. I live in Kota, Rajasthan. I have grown up in a family that has always owned multiple cars — not as status symbols, not as investments, but as genuine companions in the daily business of living. At any given moment our family has six vehicles — a Honda City 2018, a Kia Seltos, a Hyundai Creta, a Toyota Fortuner, a Mahindra XUV700, and a Toyota Innova Crysta.
Six cars. Six very different personalities. Six very different relationships with the people who drive them.
And from those six cars — and from the years of driving, maintaining, discussing, arguing about, and loving them — I have learned things about life that no classroom, no book, and no mentor has taught me as clearly or as honestly.
Cars Taught Me That Reliability is Everything
The Toyota Innova Crysta in our fleet has covered more kilometres than I can count precisely. It has been driven through Rajasthan’s brutal summers where the temperature touches 47 degrees Celsius and the road surface shimmers with heat haze. It has been driven through monsoon nights when visibility drops to almost nothing and the road disappears into water. It has been driven fully loaded — seven passengers, luggage, the accumulated weight of a family going somewhere together — on roads that were not designed to make any of that easy.
And it has never — not once in a meaningful way — let us down.
I was in that Innova Crysta when I had a serious accident. The front of the car was extensively damaged. Everything visible from outside — gone. And I walked away without a scratch.
That experience taught me something I carry with me every single day. Reliability is not a feature. It is not a specification. It is not something you can fully appreciate until the moment when everything depends on it and it delivers.
The most reliable people in your life — the ones who show up when it matters, who do not let you down when you need them most — are the Toyota Innova Crystas of human relationships. They are not always the most exciting. They are not always the most feature-loaded. But when you need them — they are there. Completely and without question.
I try to be that kind of person. The Innova Crysta taught me to try.
Cars Taught Me That Character Matters More Than Specifications
The Honda City 2018 in our fleet produces 119 bhp. The Mahindra XUV700 produces 200 bhp. By every objective measure the XUV700 is a more powerful, more impressive, more capable vehicle.
And yet every single time I have a choice of which car to take — I choose the Honda City.
Not because of its power. Not because of its features. Because of its character.
There is something about the Honda City’s steering — the way it communicates exactly what the road is doing beneath you. There is something about its engine — the way it revs smoothly and willingly to the redline without ever feeling strained or harsh. There is something about the way it sits on the road — composed, confident, exactly where you placed it.
The City has character. It has a personality that reveals itself slowly over thousands of kilometres — not in any single impressive moment but in the accumulated experience of every journey you take in it.
I have applied this lesson to how I evaluate people too. Impressive specifications — qualifications, achievements, titles — matter less than character. The person who is consistently honest, consistently engaged, consistently themselves — that person is worth more than someone with an impressive resume who lacks the qualities underneath.
The Honda City taught me to look for character. In cars. In people. In everything.
Cars Taught Me That Some Things Cannot Be Replaced — Only Continued
I have a saying that people who know me have heard many times.
Only a City can replace a City.
What I mean by this is not just that I will buy a Honda City 2026 to replace the Honda City 2018 I have been driving. What I mean is something deeper — something about continuity and identity and the relationships we build with the things that matter most to us.
The Honda City 2018 has been with me through every significant phase of the last four years. It has been present at my happiest moments and my lowest ones. It has covered 2,30,000 kilometres of my life — more than most relationships in my life have covered in terms of shared experience.
You cannot simply replace something like that. You cannot close a chapter that has been written so deeply into your experience and open a completely different one without loss. The only thing that makes sense — the only thing that honours what has come before — is to continue the same story in a new chapter.
That is what the Honda City 2026 represents to me. Not a replacement. A continuation. The same relationship, evolved. The same commitment, renewed.
I have applied this understanding to how I think about everything important in my life. The things that matter most are not replaced. They are continued — with gratitude for what they have been and excitement for what they will become.
Cars Taught Me That Passion is a Responsibility
When I started Motor Mogul in April 2026 I told people I was building a website to earn passive income. That was true. But it was not the whole truth.
The whole truth is that I have been passionate about cars since I was old enough to notice them. Since the Honda Accord arrived in 2009 and I stood in the driveway understanding — at whatever age I was then — that this was something special. Since the first time I sat in the driver’s seat of the Honda City and felt something click into place inside me that has never come undone.
Passion is something people talk about as if it is purely a gift — as if it simply arrives and makes everything easier and more meaningful. But I have learned that passion is also a responsibility.
When you are passionate about something — genuinely passionate, not casually interested — you owe it something. You owe it your full attention. You owe it honest effort. You owe it the discipline to keep showing up even when the showing up is hard.
I have written articles about cars at midnight when I was exhausted. I have researched specifications for cars I will never drive at 2 AM because the article needed to be accurate. I have pushed through frustration and self-doubt and the very human desire to just stop and rest — because the passion demanded it.
Motor Mogul is what passion as responsibility looks like in practice. It is not always easy. It is not always immediately rewarding. But it is always honest — and in the long run honest effort in service of genuine passion is the only thing that builds something real.
Cars taught me that. By making me love them so completely that walking away was never an option.
Cars Taught Me That the Journey Matters More Than the Destination
This is perhaps the most clichéd lesson anyone can take from cars — and yet it is the truest one I know.
I have driven the Kota to Jaipur highway more times than I can count. I have driven it at dawn when the road is empty and the light is turning the Rajasthan landscape gold. I have driven it in heavy monsoon rain when the road is invisible and every sense is focused on simply getting through safely. I have driven it with a full car of family members all talking simultaneously and the radio competing with the conversation and the AC working hard against the summer heat.
The destination — Jaipur — is always the same. But the journey is never the same twice.
The car I am in matters to the quality of that journey in ways that are difficult to fully articulate. In the Innova Crysta the journey is commanding and comfortable — a sense of sitting above everything, of being protected and capable. In the Honda City the journey is connected and engaged — a sense of being part of the road rather than just passing over it. In the Fortuner the journey is effortless and authoritative — a sense that whatever the road produces, you are ready for it.
The same destination. Completely different experiences of getting there.
Life works the same way. The destinations we set for ourselves — the goals, the milestones, the achievements — are important. But they are not where life actually happens. Life happens in the journey. In the ordinary moments of getting there. In the unexpected detours and the difficult stretches and the occasional perfect stretch of empty road at dawn where everything feels possible.
Choose the journey you want to live. The destination will arrive in its own time.
What I Am Still Learning
I am 23 years old. I have been driving for a few years. I have lived with six very different cars and absorbed what each one had to teach me.
But I am still learning.
I am learning what it means to build something from nothing — Motor Mogul is teaching me that every day. I am learning what it means to pursue a goal with enough patience and enough consistency that the goal eventually becomes reality — the Honda City 2026 is teaching me that. I am learning what it means to love something so completely that it becomes part of your identity — the Honda City 2018 has been teaching me that for four years and 2,30,000 kilometres.
And I am learning — slowly, imperfectly, honestly — what it means to be the kind of person that the best cars I have known are. Reliable when it matters most. Full of character beneath the surface. Better experienced than described. Worth the journey.
That is what cars have taught me about life.
And I am grateful — more than I can fully express — that I grew up in a family that loved them enough to make them teachers.
— Pulkit Trigunayat Founder, Motor Mogul Kota, Rajasthan
