It’s not that I’m some speed freak kind of insane Mad Maxian, Bullitt-driving, Vanishing Pointish Blues Brother, verging on the Thelma & Louise, but I just like fast cars and faster driving. I’m a victim of my age. (Always award yourself victim status to at least mitigate acting like a total nob, if not gaining sympathy for it.) Because I was born in 1956 and came of ‘age’ in about 1966. And that is just about the start of the world’s car insanity. When cars went from being ‘horseless carriages’, but not necessarily any faster for the lack of the nag, to being insanely vicious power-monsters that would eventually become almost extinct due to economic and environmental factors. Or ‘tree-huggers’ as the Green movement became. Another movement put together the symbols ‘V’ and ‘8’ and the world had changed.

Every movie I saw involved cowboys killing ‘Indians’, soldiers killing Germans or massively powerful cars racing each other across San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix or Huddersfield. The ‘car chase’ was the standard almost obligatory scene in each and every heist movie, cop movie, love story (even the Graduate had Dustin racing his gorgeous Alpha Spyder around California) or even cooking program. Almost. And I loved them. Each car chase needing to have its own ‘unique selling point’ to avoid being generic. So French Connection was a different thing to Bullitt and the Blues Brothers decided ‘crash em all’ was the way to do it.

Other films were more unashamedly ‘the car’s the star’. TV too. I mean, who the fuck would ever watch The Dukes of Hazard if it wasn’t for the fantastic Dodge? Ok, and Daisy Duke. Vanishing point again used a Dodge and the whole thing was a drug-fuelled chase from Denver to California. A fab soundtrack, virtually drowned out by the supercharged 7 litre engine noise, an economy sized bottle of ‘speed’ and a driver with mental health issues. Movies get no better than that.

I also discovered a magazine called ‘Custom Car’. Which formed an indelible link in my pubescent mind between outrageous cars and beautiful, mainly semi-naked, women. The centre spreads (no pun) adorned the walls of my bedroom. Circumventing the usual rules on pornography on the basis of “noooooo, but look at the car!”

So per-lease, don’t tell me about cars that stop at the speed limit autonomically. Don’t give me, ‘black box technology’ so they can see if you had been speeding. Don’t give me all that obsessively nannifying ‘elf’n’safety bollocks, I just don’t want to know. I can’t. I’m a victim. GIVE ME CAR FUN!!!!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx