Salute my ancient queen of the road

"They don't build them like this any more," he said as I gazed in awe at his maquillage. "It's the perfect allotment motor."

Once I'd finished pondering the anomaly of a man who spends his working life fiddling with oily engines painting his nails red, I thought about what he'd said. I've always believed my Volkswagen Passat hatchback was a superior sort. She may be 26 but when she queens it down the outside lane of the motorway, lesser motors scuttle to the inside.

And because she's dark blue and elderly and uncool, no low-life ever bothers to take a coin to her flanks, or steal her, or joyride in her, not even when her central locking system unaccountably unlocks itself in the middle of the night.

But what my charming transvestite friend was talking about is the Passat's roomy rear. A fellow allotmenteer, he'd noticed the back seats were folded forwards (pretty much a permanent state of affairs) and spotted the telltale leaves, bits of branch, spiders' webs and rotting apples liberally strewn around.

I can ferry umpteen sacks of perennial weeds and tree prunings to the council recycling centre in my motor without being unduly bothered that I'm making a mess of her (I am, but so what? She's not going to get any better-looking at her age.)

She has carried furniture and a couple of bichons frises (dogs to the uninitiated, though not mine, I hasten to add), as well as a young hawthorn tree, and once I didn't shut her back properly and a sack of compost fell out onto the A316.

By the time I'd turned around and gone back to retrieve it before it could cause an accident, it had vanished. They're quick off the mark when it comes to salvage in Richmond.

I dare say she lowers the tone of the neighbourhood: round my way youthful people-carriers and four-wheel drives rub shoulders with a pair of Porsches. (The maxim that by the time a man can afford to buy a Porsche he shouldn't is spot on. They are not meant to be driven by men who are losing their hair.) But I don't exactly raise the tone of the neighbourhood myself, thank God, so we are perfectly matched.

I think my motor knows she's been praised recently - her head's up and she's raring to go. As for me, well - I just owe it to myself to start taking care of my nails.