IAIN BANKS, the bestselling author, has ditched his luxury fleet of gas-guzzling sports cars after being overcome with guilt about his carbon footprint.

The writer of The Crow Road and The Wasp Factory has sold some of his most cherished possessions, including two Porsches, a Jaguar and a BMW, and traded them in for a single Lexus RX 400h worth about £40,000, a hybrid car that uses electric motors to improve petrol consumption and reduce emissions.

Banks said he saw the error of his ways when “one mad day” last year he replaced all the light bulbs in his house with energy saving ones.

He also bought a home wind turbine from a B&Q store that he intends to put on the roof of his North Queensferry home overlooking the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh, and is planning to vote Green.

“Anyone in the public eye has a duty to behave responsibly but I can’t be hypocritical,” he said. “I had my fun but now I’m trying to be better behaved. When I sold my Porsches back to the dealer, I think he thought I had gone mad.”

Since 2000, Banks has lavished more than £150,000 on cars, including expensive upgrades. His fleet included a bottle green 3.2 litre Porsche Boxster and a burgundy 911 Turbo with a top speed of about 190mph. He also had a 3.8 litre Mark II Jaguar, similar to the type driven by the television detective Inspector Morse, and a 5 litre black BMW. Banks’s “work-horse” vehicle was a diesel Land Rover Defender whose power he had boosted by about 50%.

While Banks’s move will please greens, not everyone is happy. Jeremy Clarkson, motoring columnist for The Sunday Times, bemoaned prejudice against drivers of large cars.

“You become a figure of hate which you are constantly aware of. It’s entirely unreasonable, of course, but it is the lunatic fringe who are blinded by inaccurate science,” he said. “It’s a shame Iain Banks has succumbed to the propaganda of the hippies and the communists. But fear not, for every cylinder Iain Banks loses, I’ll buy another three.”

Banks is joining a growing number of drivers abandoning petrol-thirsty luxury cars out of guilt at their carbon emissions.

Part of the reason for the shift was last week’s westward extension of the London congestion charging zone to take in the affluent area where 4x4s first gained notoriety as “Chelsea tractors”. The Lexus RX 400h, Toyota Prius and other hybrid cars are exempt from the £8 charge.

“It is no longer seen as cool to drive a 4x4,” said Blake Ludwig, campaigns director of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, which issues hoax parking tickets to 4x4 drivers. “People who drive them now risk being seen as social outcasts.”

Thandie Newton, the Bafta award-winning star of the film Crash, has swapped her BMW X5 for a Toyota Prius after protesters bombarded the car with eggs at the gates of her son’s school. She then wrote to her celebrity friends imploring them to join her by swapping to more environmentally sound cars.

Hollywood actors Will Smith and Tom Cruise as well as Chris Martin, the Coldplay singer, all received letters from Newton urging them to convert.

Another car enthusiast who is abandoning gas-guzzlers is Sir Peter Vardy, the Sunderland-based dealer who made a £150m fortune selling Vauxhalls. He said he would be selling his Range Rover for something with lower emissions.

The growing environmental awareness of drivers is reflected in overall sales figures. Purchases of SUVs and 4x4s peaked in late 2005 and last month were down 9.8% on January 2006, while overall car sales grew 5.2%. Sales of the smallest cars were up by a quarter.

Despite his own car sale, Banks, 53, admits he has not completely abandoned thrill-seeking driving. “The Lexus has the usual toys but it’s essentially a transportation device,” he said. “I also have my Honda motor-bike if I feel like scaring myself.”

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