Perception, as the Doors well knew, can be a funny thing. For years I've been convinced to the point of evangelism that the Citroen GS/GSA is the best car ever built; the perfect compromise between size and load capacity, economy and performance, comfort and handling, form and function. I've owned three - two GSA's and a GS - as well as a CX, a BX, and various others from other manufacturers.

In fact, on that note, I've been accused of being a bit of a car whore. I owned five cars in 2005 and I still have no idea of whether I should be proud or ashamed of that fact. Either way, I should be in a good position to offer an authoritative comparison of various Citroens, Saabs, Volkswagens, Peugeots, Nissans and Rovers from the 1970s to the 2000s.

I am not.

It goes like this: whatever I'm driving, I have no choice but to compare directly to the last car I've driven. Whenever I used to get into the 2005 Micra from the BX, I got annoyed at its apparent total lack of suspension and load space. Then I'd get back into the BX and stab frantically at the steering wheel, wondering where the handy volume control for the stereo had gone.

At the other end of the spectrum, I'd get from my BX into my mother's Peugeot 106 (which is five years younger than the BX) and be appalled at the total lack of anything - ride quality, space, gadgets, build quality, refinement, power steering... but Mum loves it because it's so much easier to drive than her knackered old 309.

Which brings me back to that GS. After entertaining a longing to get back into the classic car world for so long that it had actually started paying rent, I was lucky enough to be offered the chance to own once again the GS that I had five years ago - the GS that I took with me to the year I spent in Voghera, Italy, 900 miles away. I sold my BX and dived right in, longing to get back to the GS experience that I had missed so much.

The nostalgic "first drive home" was not all I'd been expecting. In fact, I found my GS to be slow, noisy, hard work to drive and poorly built, doors making a nasty clanging noise when they shut and various bits of interior trim pinging off and disappearing. So why the hell did I always love them so much? And why was I so disappointed this time around?

I probably would have been quite depressed at the end of my long drive home (60 miles from Aldershot to Brighton so not that long really) if I hadn't always kept records. I know, for example, that when my other daily drivers were a 1973 Rover 2000 and a 1986 Peugeot 309 I praised my GS for being the most modern, the easiest drive, having the lightest controls and generally the best all-round ability.

I also know that when I finally decided to sell my beloved CX, on the very sensible grounds that it was bankrupting me, I turned to a knackered GSA as a replacement. I know that, on the 180 mile drive home from Kettering to where I used to live in London, I asked my then-girlfriend aloud why anyone had bothered buying the CX when the GS/A was just as capable and comfortable and so much cheaper to buy and run. She drove both and agreed that yes, I should probably just shut up about old French cars for a bit (despite being French herself).

So why, when I should have been at my happiest, driving the car I'd missed ever since I'd sold it, did I feel so exhausted at the end of the drive? Why did I jump at every odd rattling noise, and feel so annoyed at every non-working electrical accessory? I've probably overused the phrases "it's just a bad earth" and "don't worry, it's French, we don't expect the electrics to work" in my life and I think I've finally started to understand why my passengers always gave those excuses such short shrift. Cramped and harsh-riding as the Micra is, dented and battered as the Passat was, slow, cheap and thrifty as the BX was... all the buttons on those cars functioned as they were supposed to. Most importantly, they all had power steering. Here is a gizmo which has become indispensable, something I was not brought up on but which has nevertheless become something I am finding it hard to do without. Frankly, I find steering the GS bloody hard work.

Why didn't I feel that when I went from the CX, with its DIRAVI (lightest power steering known to man) to the knackered black GSA? What's happened to me?

Since I sold my manky black GSA in January 2005 I've owned a 1985 VW Passat, 1986 Saab 900 and 1993 Citroen BX, all equipped with power steering. I've also regularly driven a 2005 Nissan Micra and a 1995 Peugeot 106 - the only one lacking in power assistance but also the one I have mainly moaned about.

Have I gone soft? Oh yes.

I'm the first to admit that I'm only playing at being a motoring journalist, getting bits published here and there in a club magazine. But this realisation has given me a ton of respect for the real deal. Imagine you work for Top Gear or Car magazine; how the hell do you realistically write a review of the latest Hyundai Santa Fe if you were reviewing the Ferrari Scaglietti yesterday? Where do you find your benchmark? Five years ago I thought my 1978 GS a capable modern car and drove it to Italy; now I'm scared to take it out on the motorway.

It must be even worse for the classic car magazine guys. I find it hard to imagine a better job than one where I get to drive, for example, a Plymouth Barracuda and an Austin Ten in the same day. What I don't understand, though, is the way they can keep it all separate.

There's no pat conclusion to this article, no answers. Just an appeal to those of you with a modern car and an old one to write back with some advice, some way to ease the transition between modern and ancient; between DIRAVI and big biceps.