News / Reviews - Read Daily News and First Impressions for the latest model launches and concept car previews. Road Tests put you in the driving seat with in-depth analysis of the new cars that count while She Drives offers a woman's view from behind the wheel. We've lots more too - Photo Galleries, Features, Running Reports, User Reviews, Motormouth and a Newsletter to keep you up to speed.

Surrey without 4x4s

I was going to write another piece about how Ferdinand Piech is lining up the ducks so that Porsche can take over Volkswagen, and about how a few sycophants have already showed their hands, declaring Piech to be the very best thing since geschnittenes Brot.

I was going to write such a piece but my spy at Wolfsburg has taken a turn for the worse and hasn’t been seen for days, so instead I shall have to content myself with a short piece about global warming.

To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it until a recent TV programme on the subject made me realize that we all must do something, and soon. By means of clever animation and graphics we were treated to a glimpse of Britain in the grip of an ice age, in which the whole country took on the aspect of North Britain, the proper and one-time familiar term for Scotland.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather my Surrey daffodils came up a month early than live in North Britain, a possibility very much on the cards if the Stern report is taken seriously. The ice-man cometh, unless we act now.

With this prospect in mind, I was delighted to note that the Detroit motor show is playing host to a plethora of gas-guzzlers – the sort of cars that ignite fury in the hearts of do-gooding Prius drivers. Bring on the gas-guzzlers, I say. Enough of your lean-burn hybrid engines – let’s all live in a greenhouse.

And there is sound logic in such treason. Think how much energy would be saved if we didn’t need central heating: I wouldn’t mind betting that in warming millions of homes, the nation’s power stations belch out more CO2 in a year than all the 4×4s on the books of the DVLA. And another thing: for every 4×4 we condemn to the scrapheap, China builds two more; and in a few years time, ten more.

So ignore the doom-mongers – who are in any case in the employ of a government anxious to generate more stealth tax to replace falling tobacco revenue – and plant a few palm trees and buy a 4×4. You know it makes sense.