All for love

Here's a good word for you: autophilia. The classically educated among you will recognise the -philia suffix and deduce it means "love of . . .". Then that massive brain of yours would realise that, given the context of this being a column that is ostensibly motoring-based, the auto- prefix refers to cars. QED, you say, autophilia is the love of cars.

You would, of course, be correct. And absolutely wrong at the same time. Autophilia also refers to something else completely, a pursuit unmentionable on these pages. Suffice to say, it is something done alone and in private. Feel free to look it up, but don't say I didn't warn you.

We Irish are a particularly autophiliac bunch. As befits one of the most car-dependent countries on earth, our love for them is borderline pathological. And the love affair shows no signs of abating, with new car sales in the first few months of this year breaking all records.

It's always struck me as a tad odd that people could form such strong emotional bonds with what are, essentially, lumps of metal and plastic and rubber and glass.

Nobody blinks an eyelid when reviewers refer to cars as sexy, but were they to say the same about a new design of sofa, they'd be carted off to admire some wall-to-wall padding.

Nobody ever gave their office chair or couch or bed or fridge a pet name, even though we probably use them more then our cars.

If someone spent hours queuing on a Saturday morning for a couple of Latvian chaps to power-wash our office chair, unashamedly read Performance Couchmagazine in public or proudly penned churlish columns about fridge-related matters, we'd think them a bit strange. But doing same about equally inanimate objects, namely cars, is considered perfectly normal.

That's because car lovers are given special dispensation to indulge their vehicular obsessions. For cars are so much more than just modes of transport. They are sanctuaries, cocoons, hideaways. They represent freedom, romance, excitement.

Office chairs represent the exact opposite, while couches and beds and fridges are mere places of refuge where we go to hide from the horror of life itself.

A recent survey of 1,000 British car owners illustrates exactly what a shower of crazed anthropomorphites we motorists are.

Half of the respondents admitted talking to their cars, two-thirds felt emotional if they got damaged, and over a third confessed to stroking and patting them when they behaved. Many even bought them little presents for being good.

A third said they wouldn't sell their car to someone dodgy and over half admitted to experiencing grief when they did find someone nice enough and sold them their car.

Another survey found a third of motorists see their car as gender-specific. A quarter regard them as female, while only 7 per cent reckon they are male.

Makes sense - there's many a man out there who has transferred his love to his cars after realising they are more reliable, cheaper to maintain and less likely to run off with another man than most women.

With a bit of care and attention, they also get better looking with age. Something few women can boast. And then there's the names. A fifth of the US drivers had nicknames for their pride and joy. Sad, you might say. Perhaps so.

In which case, I'm pitiful. Regular readers will know I'm a chronic autophile and a sucker for naming my cars. The Bavarian Princess being a case in point. Although long sold, my heart still pines for her.

And now I have the Duchess. I love the wizened old girl dearly, despite her being harder to rouse on cold winter mornings than a hibernating grizzly bear. And no, I don't have her photo in my wallet. I find the shoulder-width tattoo of her adorning my back is quite sufficient, thanks very much.