What’s in a brand name? Well to most people a lot. Do you shop at Spar or Woolworths? Do you buy in-store bread or Albany bread? Are Pep jeans good enough for you or do you buy Levi’s? Coke or Pepsi? The answer to these questions is undoubtedly subjective, we all have our preferences and we usually stick to them no matter what. But let’s be honest most of our answers are unreasonable and are totally unjustified. Granted, Woolies veggies are the best in the business and I confess to buying them regularly, why? Well, woolies veggies just taste better and they last longer. At least that’s what I tell myself. In the end Spar veggies would more than suffice, but I’ve been conned into thinking Woolies is that much better. Damn these marketing guru’s, Damn them!

Similarly, a decent pair of jeans from Edgars will do just fine, but no, we have to fork out a small fortune on Guess, Levi’s and Diesel and then we justify the purchase with remarks like, “Levi’s just fit so well” or “The style is so unique”. What a load of bull, they’re no better than anything else you can buy, it’s just we’ve been bombarded with adverts of sexy men and women prancing around half naked, making suggestive movements and telling us that “you’ll love them so much you’ll want to sleep in them and make love in them”, come on! Whatever next!

I don’t see Edgars or Pep for that matter advertising their stuff, well at least not the way the “big” guys do. So it’s their fault really. Next time I go to the mall for a new pair of jeans which brand is going to pop into my head first, Edgars own brand? Of course not, pictures of scantily clad blonde birds, straddling a naff looking guy with an eight pack come flooding back into my head, and then, I head straight for the Levi’s section. True, you tell me?

Marketing success or brand snobbery? Well, a bit of both really, but mostly brand snobbery. Take car brands. If you’d just fell from outer space or crawled out from under a rock, what car brand would you go for? Logic tells us that we would go for the one that represents the most value for money. After all a car is not an investment, for most of us it will be the single biggest purchase we will make that will lose the value the quickest. If that were the case, we would buy a Honda Accord instead of a BMW 3 series.  The Kia Ceed would outsell the Golf 10-1 and not the other way around, and middle aged man having a mid life crisis would go home with a Mazda MX 5 and not a Ferrari 430.

If I asked you if you were to buy a car solely with reliability in mind, I guarantee at least half of you would say Toyota. Why? Because since we were young we’ve had “Everything keeps going right, Toyota” drummed into our heads. Never mind the fact Toyota was ranked eighth behind brands such as Lexus, Honda, Volvo, Mercedes Benz, Subaru, Audi and BMW in the 2008 JD Power Customer Service Index.

Eighth place out of twenty nine isn’t bad I suppose, but you know what they say, “second place is the first loser”, and eighth place is well, eighth, seven rungs from the top. Everything keeps going right? Not so says Mr Power.

These days Toyota doesn’t just make Toyota’s; they actually make Lexus and Daihatsu. Lexus’ are usually driven by wealthy businessmen who on top of reliability also want a smidgen of exclusivity. Daihatsu’s on the other hand are a bit of a budget, alternative and is a hugely underrated brand. Straight off the bat you can see Daihatsu’s were made by the Japanese, if not by the oddball styling then by the puny dimensions of the cars themselves. They’re tiny, all of them. On offer are the Charade, Sirion, Materia, Terios and Copen.

Of course I would have to be a woman to own a Copen. It is without a doubt the most unmasculine car on offer today which means women will love it. Cute, cuddly, sweet, adorable, loveable all spring to mind when I think of trying to describe this car, strange all of them are adjectives you would also use to describe a Labrador puppy. Stranger still and what bothers me the most is that I’ve only seen two of these out on the roads and they were both occupied by men. I laughed out loud and could only hang my head in shame as I overtook them, the driver, oblivious to the spectacle. If Noddy was ever made into a feature film, this would be his car.

Copen is strictly a two seater coupe/cabriolet and at 3,4m long really does push the cute and isty witsy envelope. Unladen it only weighs 850kg and to give you some idea the Materia weighs in at 1035kg. Styling wise, the Copen is in a class of its own and doesn’t seem to draw inspiration from anything else on the market. It does however have a retro look to it, and it would seem the designers were inspired by the older days where less was more. Up front, there are two sets of two headlamps, main lamps up top and fog lamps below. The main headlamp unit houses the indicator which adds to the smooth clean lines of the front. There’s more of the same at the back, front and back styling reminds me of the original beetle. Front and rear overhangs are minimal which accentuates the low, squat appearance. Completing the sporty profile is chunky 15” alloy rims, frameless doors, twin centrally exiting exhaust pipes and behind the seat headrests shiny aluminium roll over hoops similar to those found on the Audi TT Roadster.

The piece de resistance has to be the folding roof. Unlike most cheap convertibles that use a cloth soft top, the Copen has a folding hard top, as found originally on the Peugeot 206CC and now employed by everyone from Mercedes to VW. So you get the best of both worlds, a coupe and a roadster. It takes 20 seconds to fold into the boot and is semi automatic, the driver having to undo clasps on the driver and passenger side. Standard features include air-conditioning, leather upholstery, power steering, power windows, radio/CD player and dual airbags.

Under the bonnet you’ll find a 1.3 liter engine, which requires servicing every 15 000km. It’s not the most powerful of engines and you’ll have to rev the nuts of it to get going it quickly but with such a light car it will mess your hair up quite easily, and besides racing down the N3 at silly speeds is not the Copen’s specialty. It has loads of character, and will put a grin on your slightly sun burnt face, and when beasterly easterly picks up, just a flick of a switch and you’ll be snug as a bug.

The little coupe comes with a three-year/60 000 km service plan and a three-year/100 000km warranty, and sells for R 194 995.