Get into top gear of you want to impress

Aug 6 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

A FRIEND of mine wants an Irish red setter, but as she has long, auburn hair and brown eyes she is worried about conforming to the old adage about people looking like their dogs.

She is obsessed with the similarity between Winston Churchill and his favoured poodle who, despite being of very different statures, shared a range of facial expressions.

Presumably, what could be read as concern over the Dresden bombings on the wartime Prime Minister’s face was, on his canine companion, more a longing for the next bowl of Pedigree Chum.

Paris Hilton has also been said to look like her dog, a Chihuahua called Tinkerbell, because they were both blonde and feisty.

But the comparison goes further than that – both drank water from Swarovski crystal-studded bottles that cost $30 apiece, they have each had book deals and both have had their rubbish sold on eBay by fans prepared to root through the Hilton family’s bins (one of Tink’s food tins went for $305 last year).

Anyway, it turns out that looking like your dog has been trumped by another style dilemma – that of looking like your car.

Really, though, it’s more of a perception problem.

According to a survey by Kwik Fit, 44% of women judge a prospective partner by the vehicle they drive, and around 5% said they had been out with someone just because they liked his choice of model.

Another 1% admitted they had turned down a date with a man simply because they didn’t like the look of his car.

Admittedly, girls wanting a boyfriend with a flash set of wheels is nothing new – the nation has suffered decades of wedding guests thrashing about to Grease Lighting – but this isn’t just about wanting a fella with a red Ferrari.

It goes much deeper than that.

It doesn’t matter how smooth your personal appearance is, goes the theory, if your car is a mess.

A Vivienne Westwood suit and Paul Smith aftershave counts for nothing if you drive a battered old Ford Escort with filthy paintwork and a dodgy exhaust.

You may be proud of your full head of hair, but if your tyres are balding then you might as well go for a comb-over.

Intrigued by this information, I decided to take a straw poll of my friends’ cars to see what they might reveal about their personalities.

There’s C, with her “cheap Ford” that has chocolate smears on the passenger seat.

It’s a bit tired and doesn’t always run to schedule, but the journey’s never dull and it always gets there in the end.

This, though she may never forgive me for saying so, seems about right.

Then there’s A, with her Golf 1.9 Turbo Diesel.

It’s very sleek, like her dress sense, and her desire to always have the best is reflected in its flashy dashboard that lights up in cool blue and red at night.

But she’s not always as smooth as she makes out – as you can tell from the mascara stain on the ceiling left behind during a rushed make-up job.

The anomaly is V, who in person comes across as very cool and collected, yet she admits she uses her Micra “as a second cupboard” and hasn’t bothered to sort out the few bumps she has collected over the years or replace the missing hubcap.

I don’t own a car, but I still have fond memories of the old Morris Minor my parents drove when I was a little girl.

It had red leather seats that stuck to your bare legs in summer and, to my delight and my mother’s horror, when the woodwork got damp, mushrooms used to grow in the windows.

When the scrapyard giants came to take it away, my dad had to ask them if they could hold off the tow truck for just a few minutes while my sister and I had a “goodbye sit” on the red upholstery.

I still love the romance of our sadly departed Morris Minor, but it’s probably best that it stays in the past. I wouldn’t like people to think I had fungus growing in my ears.

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk