Jeremy Clarkson has known it all along, and the rest of us won't be too surprised, but after painstaking tests it's now official – a flash car means pulling power, writes KEVIN COURTNEY
READ IT AND weep, guys: women prefer men who drive expensive cars. We’ve long suspected that our pulling power was connected to the price of our automobile, but now our suspicions have been confirmed. Research by psychologists at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff have found that, when given a choice between a fat, bald, old bloke in a Porsche and a young, handsome, muscular dude in a Fiat Punto, the ladies will make a beeline for the Boxster.
If you’ve ever been baffled as to why 007 always scored with sexy Russian agents, or how Bruce Wayne always managed to coax the chicks back to the Batcave, then you can discount their good looks, manly physiques and skill at bashing baddies. It’s all down to the Aston Martin and the Batmobile. The research is conclusive: the more you spend on your motor, the more quality time you’re likely to spend with nice-looking ladies.
These unpalatable findings are the result of painstaking tests by a crack team of psychologists led by Dr Michael Dunn. They gathered a group of female volunteers aged between 21 and 40 into their lab and showed them pictures of a man sitting in a silver Bentley Continental valued at £70,000 and a man at the wheel of a beat-up old Ford Fiesta probably worth about €1 in today’s car market. Amazingly, the women said they’d prefer to meet the man in the Bentley, even though he was the same man who was sitting in the Fiesta.
For the team, this was proof that women judge a man by wealth and status. For those well-heeled greybeards going through the meno-Porsche, this is good news; for the rest of us, it’s the end of the road. We had held out the faint hope that women might be swayed by our sense of humour or our crumpled, boyish demeanour, but no – it’s the car, fellas. If you ain’t got the wheels, she’ll turn on her heels.
This is something Jeremy Clarkson has known all along, but even the slowest bloke in the back can't be too surprised. Indeed, you couldn't be blamed for thinking this dispatch from the Institute of the Bleedin' Obvious is some sort of April Fool concocted by some cruel playboy while cruising along the Amalfi coast in his Lamborghini with his leggy supermodel passenger. But no, Dr Dunn is real, and somebody actually stumped up the funds for his team to conduct this vital sociological experiment. Their findings can be read in this month's British Journal of Psychology, in an article headlined "Effect of manipulated prestige-car ownership on both sex attractiveness ratings".
According to Dr Dunn, women’s attraction to men of wealth and status is “ingrained” through evolution, so don’t expect women to suddenly change their minds and go doe-eyed over you and your rusty old Renault. Women choose men of means, says Dr Dunn, because they’re better placed to rear healthy offspring and provide them with a secure upbringing. Even wealthy women, who don’t need to marry a breadwinner, will show a preference for the guy who looks like he’s got the moolah.
These findings may simply confirm what blokes knew already, but they couldn’t have come at a worst time. With the economy in free-fall, many have had to flog the Porsche to pay off debts, leaving them bereft of a babe magnet. The only men who can still afford expensive cars are the bankers with big pay-offs. How this affects the gene pool is anyone’s guess. Let’s face it, there are not a lot of Daniel Craig types in the world of high finance. The bankers’ kids may be rich, but they’ll also inherit pattern baldness, cauliflower ears and a taste for grabbing more than their fair share. So think on that, ladies, as you eye up that portly slaphead tooling around in his Maserati.
Dunn admits that his findings could be construed as evidence that women are shallower than men, but the team performed the same tests on men and found that we experience our own primal urge. When we see a beautiful babe behind the wheel of a shiny new Porsche and a beautiful babe in a Punto, we’re not looking at the car at all – we’re checking out the driver. She could be driving a tractor for all we care – she’ll still get our engines revving.