Baby, you can punch my car

Remember this, from earlier this month?

A man got out of the Zafira and punched the victim in the face, while a woman, who also got out of the car, punched the Beetle several times.

Not an isolated case, it seems. A public-spirited chap in Berkshire who remonstrated with a child for dropping litter in a DIY store car park found himself under attack from its sire and dam:

The father punched him in the head twice and the mother smashed in the passenger door of his car.

The perpetrators sound similar too; in the first case,

The man was white, in his early 30s, 6ft to 6ft 3ins, of muscle build [sic] with short dark hair shaved at the sides. The woman was white, 30 to 32, of medium build, 5ft 5ins, with shoulder-length blonde hair with dark roots.

While in the second,

The man was white, about 5ft 7ins and of a "very muscular build with a shaved or bald head". The woman is described as white, aged 38 or 39, with long blonde hair tied into a pony tail, and wearing a light pink top.

If it's the same woman, albeit clearly looking a bit rougher, she has managed in the space of three weeks to trade up from a Zafira to a 'new-looking' gold pick-up truck while incidentally changing partners (unless, of course, the first victim exaggerated the size of his assailant).

An unlikely coincidence, you'll agree (at least as far as the car is concerned), which leaves us contemplating the unpleasant possibility that this may now be standard practice in some circles, with the traditional female cry of 'Leave it; he's not worth it' replaced by a spot of impromptu panel-beating.

While we generally applaud equality for the female of the species, it's more than a little worrying to think that these aggressive couples have learned to synchronise their attacks on owner and vehicle alike.

It's not big and it's not clever

We’ve all heard them – the cars that cruise past the bedroom window in the middle of the night with open windows and speakers blasting out the jacked-up bass into a quiet street. What goes through their tiny minds, we wonder, and why do they do it? (Although these questions are usually phrased rather more explicitly, particularly at two in the morning.)

Last night’s Gadget Show provided an answer in the shape of young turk presenter Ortis, ‘pimping his ride’ for a car competition at the slightly incongruous Santa Pod Racetrack, Northants.

Eschewing the Aga-sized bank of in-car speakers favoured by his competitors in the entertainment class, he mounted external speakers on the doors of his Golf. ‘This will really impress the girls’, he announced proudly.

So that’s it. An audible phallic symbol. And the rest of the neighbourhood has to put up with the racket even on rainy nights because the driver can wind up the windows and still annoy everyone in the street while he and his passengers play on the built-in games console in the dashboard.

But the worst of it is that this particular car could soon be coming to a street near you; the Gadget Show is offering it as a prize in one of those intellectually demanding phone-in competitions (‘Madonna had a hit with a)American Biscuit b)American Crumble c)American Pie – calls cost £2.50’) so there's no knowing where it will end up.

There is only one consolation when you’ve been woken up for the third time by one of these inadequates cruising past – the theory that the vibrations caused by these speakers can drastically loosen the bowels of those in close proximity.

Sadly there appears to be no scientific evidence for this but I, for one, fervently hope it’s true.