The big numbers neurosis

REARVIEW:WHY IS an Irish car salesman like a turkey plucker? Because they both spend most of the year twiddling their thumbs before exploding into action for a few short weeks.

This sorry situation is a result of our ridiculous year-specific registration system which ensures two-thirds of all new cars are sold in the first four months of the year. After all, what better way to announce your success to your neighbours than park a car with a registration plate that says “I’m brand spanking new” outside your house?

This quest to keep up appearances illustrates a deep sense of malaise at the heart of Irish society. If you go to most other European countries, nobody gives a hoot what anyone else drives. The average Frenchman in a battered Peugeot exudes 100 times more self-belief than a whole fleet of Irish wannabes fluttering about in 2010 Mercs.

Why are we so preoccupied with what others think of us? Is it a post-colonial mindset, a desire to flaunt the wealth our ancestors never had as some sort of pathetic self-affirmation? Who knows? Whatever it is, the front- loaded sales season causes mayhem for Irish car dealers in terms of cashflow and staffing. It also creates a headache for a Government trying to estimate how much VAT and VRT it’ll pull in over the year. Which is why the Society of the Irish Motor Industry wants a new system that will show not only the year of purchase, but the month too.

Will this work? Or course not. It just means punters will stall and stall until Murphy in number 13 cracks under the pressure and loses the standoff.

So what is the solution? Sadly, other than the forcible introduction of mass psychoanalysis and/or communism, there isn’t one.