What would be your ultimate "Driving" car?

It's Friday. The work week is over and as you make your way home you can feel the freedom of the weekend coarsing through you as it fills you with excitement. You've made it through a week filled with endless emails, phonecalls and stress, and you're looking forward to trading the briefcase and suit for a beer and a pair of shorts for the next 48 hours.

As soon as you're home, you toss your briefcase aside and you sit on the couch for a while and forget the stresses of life. You're ready for the weekend, and the possibilities are endless. So, what do you do?

Most would go out for dinner or grab a drink with their friends. Maybe there's a game on and you want to sit back and watch your team get the win. If it's nice out, that means it might be time to fire up the grill and call a few friends over for a cookout and a few drinks on the deck.

Then there's car guys.

Sure, we love a good Bar-B-Q; we love being able to Crack open a cold one after a long week, and we love sports as much as the next guy. But that isn't our first solution when it comes to de stressing and unwinding. Actually, we usually are racing home after a long week and, it's normally so we can race back out again for a few hours. We don't normally go for the remote and For us, we trade our suit and briefcase for a set of keys and our favorite road. For us, it's time to go for a drive.

So whats the big deal, right? Why are we so eager to get out on the road whenever we can? It's simple. Driving is a stress reliever. It's our escape from reality. It's our time to settle in, turn the music up, roll the windows down and clear the mind. It's our form of solitude, and it's for these reasons among many that we take the road solo at the end of each work week. So, picture yourself grabbing the keys and heading for the garage. You open the door and you find your weekend ride looking back at you. You make your way to the driver's door as you excitedly prepare for a few hours of peace; the radio and rumble of the engine as your only companions on this journey to a mellow bliss. So what are you driving? Is it a coupe? Convertible? Is it fast?

For me, it was actually my first car that I considered my ultimate "Driver's" car - a red Mazda RX-8. It had a 1.3 liter rotary engine which gave my right foot 240 horses at my disposal. Aside from the unique engine, this car was a classic set up. Rear wheel drive and a front mounted engine mated to a 6 speed manual transmission were the ingredients of this traditional sports car recipe. Add a 50/50 weight distribution and plenty of torque, and you were certainly in for some fun runs in the hills. And though I said goodbye to it a couple years ago, it was still the best car I ever owned,  not because of the performance or because of the colors, but because it had that "x" factor that I just didn't get in any other car. Sure it wasn't the most reliable. It burned oil and it wasn't very efficient. The clutch was hydraulic and at 70,000 miles I had to fork over 2 grand to have it and the ignition coils replaced, which, sadly was one of the reasons I bid Adu with this otherwise special car. But aside from these issues, it still holds the title to this day of best car I've ever driven. And it's served as the meter stick for which I've compared each car I've driven since.

I have an interesting question for you. When is the last time you went out for a drive? Not for any particular purpose or reason; but rather for the sake of driving? If you can't seem to remember, then consider this next question, if you had the choice of driving any car on any road you wanted, what would it be? Where would you drive? Answer these two questions and I promise you you'll have a new outlook on life.

Or, at least a new way of unwinding from it.