He appeared to be completely normal, just an ordinary man with two eyes, a nose and a pair of trousers, tootling up the motorway at a reasonable 70mph. And yet he obviously wasn’t normal at all because he was driving a Lexus SC convertible.

This means that at some point in the recent past he’d spent a not inconsiderable £54,778 on a car which has the ride quality of wood, the style of a burns victim and all the excitement of being dead. Plainly, then, he was a mentalist.

Further down the road I saw a fat woman who also carried an air of human-ness about her. But she too was obviously a certified window licker because she was driving, in public, in a three-cylinder Hyundai Accent diesel. She would no doubt argue that it’s cheap. Absolutely. But so is self-immolation.

The Accent diesel performs with the gusto of a light breeze and corners with the relish of an oil rig. It is, I think, one of the three worst cars money can buy. And remember, it’s made by people who think One Man and his Dog is a cookery programme.

I wanted to bang on her window and explain the error of her ways. I wanted to point out that today, more than ever, there is simply no excuse for buying a rubbish car because the marketplace is awash with stuff that’s really good.

Normally, at any one time, there’s only one car on sale that really gets its hook into the soft flesh of my brain’s sillier bits. Sometimes there are none. I seem to recall that in the late Eighties things were so bad that I went for a couple of years without owning a car at all. And then along came the Escort Cosworth.

Now, however, there are probably 20 or 30 cars that I’d gladly buy, cars that I want to buy, cars that keep me awake at night as I toss and turn wondering which one would be best . . .

My current favourite is the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. Lamborghinis have always been 10 tons of style with no substance at all. But in recent years Audi has put a bit of Araldite in the mix and now you could nearly convince yourself that this noisy and shouty mid-engined drop top supercar with bright orange seats is a sensible exchange for 131,000 of your pounds. Plus another £600 if you want a cupholder.

It is expensive. Too expensive really for what you get in terms of technology, but when you first put your foot down, and those tail pipes start to trouble seismographs in faraway places, and the four-wheel-drive system starts to post power to whichever one of the fat tyres has the most grip and the whole thing starts to come alive, then all of a sudden £131,600 doesn’t sound so bad any more.

Of course, each of us needs a slightly stupid excuse for buying a supercar that you can never use. Mine is: I keep banging on about what fun supercars are to own and drive. So it’s only right and proper that I should put my money where my mouth is. My children agree with me on this.

But then the next night I come over all Maserati-ish. I loathe the flappy-paddle gearbox that comes as standard and ruins the Quattroporte, but I know a traditional automatic is in the pipeline and I’m sure that this will remove the bung that, to date, has stopped me buying one.

It may be a four-door saloon and it may have a few styling cues from the 1972 Vauxhall Cresta, but nevertheless I challenge you to park this outside your house and then walk to your front door without turning round for one last look before going inside. It has, what’s the word . . . presence.

But then for a similar sort of outlay — £83,000 — you could have an Aston Martin V8 Vantage.



In fact the only reason I do not have this car is that my wife has one, and it would look greedy, having two.

The only reason you might shy away is because you prefer the looks of the DB9. Tricky one, that. But tricky in a delicious can’t-choose-between- the-summer-pudding-and-the-crème-brûlée sort of way.

The DB9 is £25,000 more expensive and it’s hard when you drive the two back to back to see why that might be so. The V12 is creamier than the savage V8 but in terms of performance there’s little to choose between the two. Of course the DB9 has back seats, but unless your children are conjoined in some way, or they came out of your wife as torsos, then they won’t fit anyway.

And then there’s the bigger, prettier car’s Achilles heel. If you were to list the three top things you never hear people say, you’d have at number three “I wish I had a smaller penis”, at two “On balance, Tony Blair’s done a good job”, and at number one “I bought a DB9 and I’ve had no trouble with it at all”.

No, really. If you leave a DB9 alone while you pop into the shop for some biscuits, some electrical item on the car will burrow into the battery and eat all its amps. DB9s never start. Whereas my wife’s V8 has been totally bulletproof.

So it’s the Vantage, then, but hang on a minute, because what about the new Jaguar XKR. It’s faster than the Aston, more powerful than the Aston, more practical than the Aston, considerably less expensive than the Aston, and while the Aston looks good and makes a tremendous noise, the Jag’s not what you’d call a shy and retiring minger.

As I lie awake at night agonising over such things, I sometimes wonder if it isn’t best to stick with the Mercedes SLK. Or what about the bigger, more practical SL, which is so perfect the only updates they’ve lavished on the 2007 model is a bit of chrome round the spot lamps and a bit more on the key ring.

Then there’s the BMW M5. All that power, all that handling, all that comfort, all those doors, and all for the surprisingly low price of £63,500.

See what I mean. I passionately want all of the cars we’ve looked at so far and the list goes on and on. I also want a Volkswagen Phaeton, a Rolls-Royce Phantom, a Corvette C6, a Vauxhall Monaro, a Porsche Carrera GT, a Zonda F, an Alfa Romeo Brera and an Audi RS4 convertible, or a hard top, or an estate. I’m not bothered, just so long as it has that astonishing 414bhp V8 motor.

I’m also acutely aware that I have never owned a Range Rover and that now is the best time ever to take the plunge. Partly this is because the current model with the supercharged Jag engine is very good but mostly it’s because in a Range Rover today, with all this eco-jingoism, you feel like a naughty schoolboy.

As I drive around in that lofty, leathery seat, I feel like I’m behind the bike sheds at school, having a fag, and then a cigarette.

You aren’t actually hurting anyone or anything, except the fag a bit, but only at first, but you have that sense of swimming against the tide. It makes me feel all warm fuzzy.

It does not make me feel as warm fuzzy, however, as the king of the hill, the engineering summit, man’s hobnail boot in the face of nature. The Bugatti Veyron. Like the Lamborghini it’s little and feels well made but unlike the Lambo it does 252mph. This make it officially “very fast”. Also it costs £830,000, which makes it officially “very expensive”. That said it is also a bargain, since it costs VW £5m to make each one.

Would I give up a kidney to have one? Yes. Without a doubt. And I’d throw in my left leg as well.

Which of course is all very well, but none of the cars mentioned here is of much help to the fat woman in the Hyundai Accent diesel. She only has a budget of, say, £9,000 and that’s not a tenth of what’s needed for, say, a Maserati Quattroporte. No worries. If she wants faster, more comfortable and more economical transport than her Accent, then she should try a pogo stick, or a space hopper or an Oyster card. Or she could buy a Fiat Panda. Better still, she could get out there and rob a bank.

Inside Jeremy’s dream garage

Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder
Aston Martin V8 Vantage
BMW M5
VW Phaeton
Rolls-Royce Phantom
Corvette C6
Vauxhall Monaro
Porsche Carrera GT
Pagani Zonda F
Alfa Romeo Brera
Audi RS4
Bugatti Veyron