Familiar with those magazine quizzes? You know, where you discover the kind of person you are by the car you drive? For example, if you're a fun-loving extrovert with a yen for danger and an eye for the ladies, you probably drive ... wait for it ... an Aston Martin!

Such quizzes mean absolutely piffle in real life - for the majority, the choice of car is dictated by less-exciting factors like practicality and budget.

Okay, so when I was much younger and slightly more foolish than I am now, I turned my nose down at Asian cars because they were perceived to be, well, boring. As a teenager, I was a regular reader of glossy car magazines that filled my head with lofty visions of some day owning a flashy car or two.

Reality struck when I started working. I didn't have an inheritance when I became an adult, so it took years to garner sufficient resources for a used Japanese car.

It would be temporary, I told myself ... but as the years progressed, the enormity of my dreams became more uncomfortably obvious.

Still, the young and foolish have a stubbornly resolute streak, and sometime in the early 1990s, I pawned all my earthly possessions to acquire a pre-owned French car.

It had loads of character, my friends agreed. Cars with character, I later learnt, also spent a lot of down-time in the workshop, bleeding their owners to the marrow. So I sold it after a couple of years, but did I learn my lesson? Not really, because when you're young, you take pride in laughing in the face of good sense. I got another French car.

I was luckier because this car stayed with me for six years before maintenance costs began to escalate. By then, I had been dragged kicking and roaring into my 40s, and you'd think some pragmatism would have taken hold of me.

To a point, yes ... I didn't get an exotic super bike to signal my mid-life crisis, I got a pick-up truck instead ... more macho, no? Too late, I realised there were many women as well who drove trucks. There went the machismo out of the window.

The truck phase lasted a couple of years; my missus loved it, and the behemoth was friendly on the wallet. However, it was odd when we dressed up in our best for functions ... and made our entry in a truck. Not cool, especially if you're wearing traditional clothes. Look, if you drive a truck, only jeans are appropriate.

So I moved on to a more practical, er, Japanese car - entry-level, economical and easy to maintain. As a friend helpfully pointed out, I had come a full circle.

You'd think owning a practical Japanese sedan had nothing to with style or statement, right? However, at a car showroom recently, the salesman told me the prices of the new generation of the car I owned were going up by a few thousand bucks.

"They want to place themselves as premium brand, unlike the 'other' brands," he said.

That's a double-edged sword for me. On one hand, if and when I change my car for the new model in the future, I'll need to fork out more, and the last thing I want on my head as I coast into retirement is another big loan.

On the other hand, perhaps by then, my current car will be perceived as a "premium" budget pre-owned car!

Well, maybe that Aston Martin can wait ...