Stuck in the fast lane

Last week on the Tallaght bypass a woman had her Toyota Yaris hijacked by a youth who held a hypodermic needle to her neck. A stylish new car has become a symbol of not only success but also of the polarisation of Irish society into two groups: those who will spend their lives sitting in traffic, and those who will never afford to. There is no better measure of the crass, ambitious, nouveau riche Ireland than the increasing number of big, powerful new cars clogging the roads. There's been a proliferation of hulking, intimidating 4x4s, which have become as common as the muck they're designed to cope with - but never go near in the hands of their suburban drivers.

The Isuzu Troopers and Land Rover Freelanders (whose advertising slogan is "feel free") give the impression that their drivers - held aloft by huge wheels and trust funds - are returning to mansions in the Home Counties or rustic ranches in the mountains. The truth is that they'll probably just be parking in front of semi-ds. Women cruise the bypasses in seven-seater multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) the size of minibuses, with only two children in the back and no plans for filling up the seating. From being a country of big families crammed into small cars, we've become a society of big cars and small families. In rush-hour tailbacks, queues of huge Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Lexuses hog the road, with no one but their drivers to occupy the space. Cars big enough to carry five in comfort help to create the traffic jams that have made AA Roadwatch, 10 years old this year, an essential service, and caused traffic to rival weather as the favourite topic of conversation between strangers and friends alike.

Conditioned to the congestion, Buddha-like drivers reign within car interiors that have become one of the few places people are left alone in relative peace in these frenetic times. An ad for Audi says nothing about the car, but it says it all just by playing opera. The message is that driving a luxurious car will send you into an alternative state of reality-escaping, classical music-loving (ie "classy") consciousness. Likewise, the new Galaxy Zetec boasts "darkened privacy glass", as though its occupants are likely to be serenity-seeking celebrities. The Lexus IS 200 offers a "pleasure dome" interior, as if meant for something other than driving. The Renault Espace (an anagram for "escape") claims to offer "room to think, room to breathe, room to manoeuvre, room to be yourself". Yes, I want it. Doesn't everybody? If only it was as easy as buying a car.

These messages are so seductive, that it almost makes you forget the reality: that with 1.2 million cars on the road in 1999 - seven times more than in 1960 - the traffic is so bad that no matter how powerful your car, you're going nowhere in a hurry. There's an absurdity in all of this that you don't have to be a car-sceptic to spot. We may be buying faster and more powerful cars, yet traffic has never moved so slowly. "Forget a mollusc-like life in the slow lane," says the ad for the Isuzu Trooper. Sorry, folks, but mollusc-like is about as fast as it gets during rush hour in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Galway. When you're commuting at an average of nine miles per hour in Dublin, you're never going to see what that 2.5 litre engine can do.

The promise that a stylish, expensive car will elevate you from the herd is illusory, but it's an illusion people like. In 1999, more people than ever before will buy the dream. By the end of the year, Irish people will have bought a total of 165,000 new cars, and 45,000 of these will be 1.6 litre or more, according to statistics provided by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI). We will also import 50,000 used cars in 1999 - nearly the same number as new cars bought in 1986.

Fifteen years ago in the Republic it was an achievement to be seen in a brand-new Ford Fiesta or Toyota Starlet. The Irish fleet, in general, was a pathetic sight: battered, dented, smoky and small. In 1986, only 53,000 new cars were sold in the whole of the Republic, fewer than in Northern Ireland that year. Considering the years of deprivation, no wonder we're suddenly in love with driving. The fact that three times that many new cars will be bought in 1999 is spectacular in itself, but add to that the fact that we will spend far more than other Europeans on our cars and it is even more impressive.

A Renault Megane, for example, costs £18,015 including tax in the Republic, compared to £14,360 including tax in Germany. Yet the Republic's pre-tax car price of £11,873, is considerably cheaper than the German pre-tax price of £12,487. The more expensive the car, the greater the price difference between the Republic and the rest of Europe. A BMW 735i costs £76,135 after tax in the Republic, compared to £56,835 in Belgium. Yet even with these enormous - and, the SIMI would say, unfair - differentials, we are still in a fever of new car-buying. But maybe it's puritanical to say that our new car ownership is bringing us the misery of traffic meltdown as the price of our own pleasure. Car drivers themselves are not to blame for traffic congestion, says Cyril McHugh, chief executive of the SIMI. There aren't too many cars; the roads are inadequate, he argues.

Government revenue from motor-related taxes (including VAT and VRT on car sales, fuel, road tax, benefit in kind and VAT on parts/service) will amount to £2.5 billion in 1999, according to a projection by SIMI. That would seem plenty to reform the Republic's grossly inadequate road structure, yet only 10 per cent of this motor-related taxation will be spent on Irish roads.

Car ownership is still comparatively low in the Republic at 31 cars per 100 population, compared to 36 per 100 in Northern Ireland. Only Portugal is lower than the Republic, at 30 cars per 100 population. In Germany, there are 50 cars per 100 population; in Italy 49 per 100, in the UK, 45 per 100, in France 44 per 100, in Belgium 42 per 100, in Sweden 41 per 100, Finland 38 per 100 and Spain 33 per 100.

With our booming economy, more cars and more investment in roads would seem inevitable. But if this is going to happen, couldn't we at least learn to drive properly and politely? There is a bolshie, aggressive attitude amongst many drivers that can make driving unpleasant. Gone are the old-fashioned polite manners of the road where two drivers meeting on a country road almost competed to see who could give way first and with the most graciousness. The ultimate in-your-face road hoggers are those obnoxiously large 4x4s that come at you on roads that are too narrow for them and refuse to give way.

"The growth of the 4x4 is awful. Less than 10 per cent of these four-wheel drives will ever be used for any sort of work, and only one per cent will do any serious off-roading," says Karl Tsigdinos, producer of RTE's car show, Drive, and editor of Car Driver magazine. "They don't handle like cars, and they are not as safe as cars, but you see people piling kids into them. Women like them because they give you a commanding driving position, but they should know that they are less safe because there is not the same crash protection, or the same handling and stopping power as in a car." The plague of brutish off-roaders and monstrous MPVs is also symptomatic of the attitude that size renders status. As people move upward economically, they may feel insecure about where they belong. Mercedes-Benz solves the problem by offering "class" with a price tag: there's the A-class, the C-class and the Eclass. Enough said. Mercedes may be the most obvious example, but all manufacturers organise their models of cars so that they are essentially moving price tags, like labels on clothes. Along with the emerging class-consciousness and social insecurity, there's an adolescent attitude to motoring, to say the least, that size equals style. In terms of social development, the Republic is going through the rebellious teenage phase, much like the American Dreamers of the 1950s.

But this awkward stage is likely to pass. Elsewhere in Europe, the trend is for smaller, classier, more elegant cars. Opel, for example, is doing an MPV (the Zafira) which promises roominess in a smaller-sized, better-organised car.

But it's not just size that's at issue. Tsigdinos says people used to buy the largest class car they could afford, even if it meant giving up luxuries like CD-players and air conditioning. The new trend is to buy the most luxurious car you can afford with all the trimmings, even if that means buying a smaller class of car. Tsigdinos predicts that the big cars of 1999 will soon look old-fashioned as people begin to go for smaller cars with better specifications and distinctive looks.

New production techniques mean that manufacturers can now target niche markets, such as the well-to-do Celtic Tiger singles unburdened by children. It used to be that you had to sell 100,000 units of a particular car to break even, whereas now you can break even at 40,000. This has opened the way for fun cars, which are clever adaptations of volume cars, such as the new Opel Speedster. The new Beetle, the Alfa Romeo 156 and the Honda Civic are also regarded as "sexy" cars due to their looks, rather than exorbitant price and size. Even Volvo is changing its image from being a tweedy, county car to being a racy, city car. In its new ad, a dog doesn't pee on it - which says something, I suppose.