PNTAP – or Urinal Fear
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: February 6, 2023
By City Rover
We should begin this month with a point of order to Editor Lamborghini. His response to last month’s inaugural City Rover column was a request “to tweak the odd bit for a family magazine”. As such, and notwithstanding my clever disguise, I suspect the (original – Ed) title of this month’s column could result in a gap higher on the blood pressure intraday stochastics.
Editor’s note: The title of this month’s missive has been “tweaked”, however there are clues in the new title, so a nice bottle of red (which is coming out of City Rover’s extensive expenses of course) to the first reader who can tell me the original title…colin@thefullfx.com
After that rude intervention, allow me to explain.
We find ourselves in early February. You have got through January without receiving the call to join your manager and HR for a quick chat in meeting room 3. Comp was at the bottom end of expectations because nobody ever values FX (I mean, Macro) properly and all the comp pool goes to equities, which we all know, is basically just selling fruit and vegetables.
And yet… somehow… you find yourself floating on air… Lo! the heavens have opened and the Divisional Head Gods have bestowed upon you the mightiest gift in all of investment banking. The ultimate status symbol. Beyond your wildest dreams, beyond MD, beyond EVP. Hell, it’s beyond partner.
It is of course: The Parking Space.
There is no greater joy, no more tangible badge of honour than the parking space under the office, complete with bat lift up to the pantry behind the trading floor. It opens up incalculable benefits, and not just the obvious sheltering from the rain and not having to sniff un-sanitised armpit on the tube.
For the bat lift allows you to come and go under cover. No more being clapped off the floor at 3pm on a Friday. No more “thanks for coming, hope you don’t mind, we started without you” when you arrive late the morning after one too many at the Ned. You appear from, and disappear to, the pantry, to ‘get a coffee’, vanish more suddenly than a Swiss peg, and be in Sweetings with a black velvet by the 11.30am open.
But like all gifts from the Divisional Head Gods, it is something of a double-edged sword. You see, you cannot imagine how it actually feels to find your new parking space is nestled between a navy-blue Bentley Continental and a sloe-black Ferrari F12.
The underground parking garage is the domain of the players, the really big swingers, so you better not turn up there with a Picanto.
You see, it is inevitable that you will bump into the owners of the other cars, the Range Rovers, the McLarens and even the M5 behind you, headlights staring silently with hooded menace. And when you nod hello at the end of the day, dispatch some small talk about how you are both leaving early for some school thing that you really don’t want to go to, you know your colleague is waiting…watching… to see what car you get into.

The portal to another dimension
To be clear, this ritual is a simple matter of seeing who has been more successful in life.
The silence is broken by plip of the alarm on the black Ferrari.
Your move.
So let’s have a stab at some consumer advice for a moment and work out what key you should have in your hand at this point. In London, thanks to Uncle Sadiq, you could be staring at £27.50 a day to drive most interesting cars through the ULEZ and Congestion Charge zones. A staggering seven grand a year. And like I said, comp wasn’t great, you aren’t made of money, and the Covid renovations…don’t get me started again.
You decide to go electric. No ULEZ, no Congestion Charge to pay for the Mayor’s chauffeured Range Rover[1], and as it happens, no Road Tax, free parking in London’s West End, and company car schemes that let you lease one out of gross income, like you would a bicycle.
But, and it’s a big BUT… most electric cars are crap.
The range is simply too low for a family car – the majority do 200 miles at a push, and who needs range anxiety, or any more anxiety, when your palms are already sweaty from that CLP/NOK trade. The eight-hour drive to Cornwall would become 12 hours, maybe even 16, and that’s unacceptable even if you didn’t have my wife, children and dogs with you in your car. So you agree that you will keep your diesel Volvo/Merc estate/Discovery for the long runs, and get a small electric car for town.
But good Lord are they a miserable lot. The plastic fantastic ID3/4, that over-sized Hyundai that was designed by a child with a ruler, a Vauxhall Corse-e, the Leaf, the Zoe, a dozen variety of Kias & Peugeots. And most hateful of all, the blancmange with an MG badge stapled to the front (the synthesised sound they make is actually Cecil Kimber turning in his grave). Utter motoring purgatory all of them – and to the Musketeers, yes, especially Teslas. If I wanted a car built like a 1990’s Hyundai (and that would depreciate just as fast) then I should buy one for £100, not £100k. All. Fridges. With. Wheels.
And so, yes, when you think about parking them on our industry’s most hallowed ground, betwixt the finest that Crewe and Modena can manage, you are reminded of the (original) title of this column.
So what to do? Very simple. Buy yourself an electric Fiat 500e, ideally the cabriolet, ideally not the one with FIAT stamped all over the roof.
Utterly classless wheels, perfectly sized, each one sold with a guarantee that there is no faster way to get across town on four wheels. The unthreatening looks, dolce vita style, puppy dog face and organic curves won’t raise the pulse of even the most militant socialist on their bicycle. They cannot (must not) know the fun that can be had behind the wheel; you own every gap with a squirt of instant torque, just fit for purpose. Beautifully built with superb electronics, pre-heating for cold mornings and a canvas roof for the warmer ones, no more a Fix It Again Tony. A 165-mile range means a charge once a week for most commutes, every one of them with delivered with a smile.
Park it in confidence. Park it in the knowledge you will beat the Bentley and the Ferrari home, every time, and at a fraction of the cost.
Size does matter. Small ones are more juicy.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8323259/Sadiq-Khan-catches-chauffeur-driven-ride-work-luxury-Range-Rover.html