About 5 years ago there was always a ‘Driving’ supplement in the Sunday Times. Only 8/10 pages, but its own thing, separate from the rest. So Jeremy Clarkson could wax lyrical about the latest hypercar that no-one reading the paper was ever going to afford and even if they could, there’s only 17 being produced and Jay Leno’s bought the lot. But you don’t read Clarkson because you’re looking to buy a car, you read him because he’s the last of the politically-very-incorrect dinosaurs not yet serving time in prison. There were other writers, some even offering more practical advice if you’re looking for a cheap run-a-round but have 7 children and four dogs, kind of stuff. And all sorts of other ‘car things’.

Then they decided to incorporate the driving section into the main Magazine. And it immediately reduced to about 4 smaller pages. And now its sometimes just 2 pages and and and and…

Writing about the sort of cars that I want to read about is about as zeitgeist as reading reviews on the best cigarettes, comparisons of ‘how many burgers you can buy for a fiver’, or recipes for cooking dogs.

Greta Thunberg don’t read driving sections. Extinction Rebellion would burn them but don’t want to increase carbon levels so they drown them instead. And with the move towards climate protectionism I can actually see how unfashionable it is for Clarkson to review today the new Aston Martin. A car that burns fossil fuels in Brontosaurus quantities. A car that emits… stuff on a massive scale. A car that is noisy, brash, brutal and so fast that there is nowhere other than a race track where you could even begin to appreciate that fastness. But its so pretty and sleek and… Aston Martinish and James Bondy and… and… its only 250k for the convertible, even though the hood mechanisms apparently a bit dodgy (you have to pay more for a good one) and I want it. I want them all. The more impractical the better. The bigger, the faster, the more uneconomical, the most polluting, the least electric, the most V-numbers you can think of, everything.

But try telling that to the kids of today. Phah!

I kind of appreciate that the kind of ‘driving’ things I love to read about represents the Book of Satan to most people, but so what? It’s not like I’m going to buy a car like that. Ok, maybe just one or two, but why can’t I read about them. Car porn. The Mail on Sunday, which I only read for annoyance anyway, annoys me more now because they’ve abandoned ‘Driving’ altogether. Which used to be written by Chris Evans and there’s no-one more annoying that him.

So I’m going to bring out a car magazine of my own. Nothing electric will ever be mentioned. Every week we’ll burn a different hybrid and compare the smoke patterns. Only cars in excess of 956 carbons per 20 yards will feature and every photo will have a non-objectified, post-feminist egalitarian draped over a bonnet wearing a bikini, or less. A really stacked one.

Happy reading.

A xxxx