A chap I used to go to college with bought a Tuscan the other day. I'll make no bones about it - he bought it as a status symbol. He thinks he's a bit of a hot shot. The car is both a status symbol and the tool he's going to use to deflect women's attention from his stale armpits and shaving rash.
He's risen up the corporate ladder in some tedious organisation to become the chief financial sales artist for the biggest independent seller of free standing financial products outside of the deregulated sector of the underwritten long term insurance reseller market.
As chief wotnot he needs to demonstrate his fat salary to the impressionable secretaries with an expensive car. He's always had a moderate interest in cars, his last car being the top of the range Vectra with more chrome badges than a US veteran's baseball cap.
The fact was that he didn't know exactly what he was buying when he bought the Tuscan. Well, not quite true. He knew he was buying one of the most head turning cars available. No one would miss him driving into the company car park. Even better - his boss told him not to park it in the company car park as it was too ostentious - how cool is that!? What he didn't realise was that he was buying a car that behaved totally differently to his overweight, mollycoddling repmobile.
Matey boy had his car three days before he lost control of it at 40mph on a straight piece of road and almost wrote the beauty off. It wasn't his fault of course. Oil on the road or one of the other of the excuses the Bloke Down The Pub's book of driving excuses. The scary thing is that he genuinely believes that it wasn't his fault. He doesn't know any better. He's never been trained to handle a lightweight car with more power than Windscale. It was an 'accident'. Wrong fat boy - there's no such thing as an accident.
Why should I care? My contempt for the fatuous pratt's liking for the Tuscan as some sort of automotive knob jewellry should have been vindicated by his off roading adventure.
However, it's suckers like him who are giving us real enthusiasts a bad name, both with the public at large and with insurance companies. It's a bit of a nonsense that any bloke with slicked back hair and a shiny suit can hop into an enormously powerful car for a few extra quid on his insurance policy. Sure his policy might cost him twice as much as you or me, but insurance companies still seem to be sharing the risk across all of us.
Which insurance companies take account of what cars you've driven before? Very few. Which insurance companies take account of any advanced driving training you've had? Very few. These two factors are probably the best indication of how good a risk you are and yet because they're not interested in this data, they can't calculate sensible premiums on that basis. Result? We all pay ridiculously high premiums for claim-free-year after claim-free-year whilst other suckers claim like they're collecting a giro.
Sadly there's little incentive for any of us to dig into our pockets and train ourselves up. Many are doing it now out of sheer enthusiasm or sense of self preservation, but wouldn't it be sensible for insurance companies to sit up, take note and reduce their losses into the bargain? Is it time for a performance licence?