Is CO2 a Cool Debate for Car Owners? By Kirk Dobie, Managing Director, GMAP Consulting

Recently Jeremy Clarkson took various 4x4's off the cool side of his Top Gear "Cool Wall" and moved them into the 'un-cool' section.

Was this because he had just purchased one himself? (making them uncool) or did he know more about the current debate on CO2 emissions, new 4x4 taxes and extensions to congestion zones in London and how this might have to be explained to Kristin Scott-Thomas?, all in all, he was probably correct.

Another rational is that 4x4 owners are often seen as the antithesis of the new, A-List, re-cycling, fashionable, cool Toyota Prius owners and how would you go about explaining that if you wanted to be trendy rather than practical?

Marketing theorists suggests that car purchasers exude more post-cognitive dissonance than for any other purchase and try to reduce it and find consonance by continuing to finding out more about the vehicle after they have bought it, (in other words, trying to justify what they have bought, whether that is at the pub, the golf club or the recycling zone of your local Waitrose).

To do this it is often important to say you have bought a vehicle made by a successful manufacturer. Take Toyota for example, look on their forecourts and you will often see a large Landcruiser alongside a Prius, in other words, skimmed all the way to full fat, or perhaps more cleverly positioning themselves at both ends of the current debate about what is melting the polar ice caps - too many 4x4's or too many trees.

Then again think about the potential Prius owner, in order to test drive one, it must be like going into a steak house for a veggie-burger or having a coke at a beer festival.

But does thinking green mean acting green? Surely with all the media coverage of the London local 4x4 tax, the congestion zone being extended to stop mothers driving their kids to school in their urban tractors, then the highest concentrations of 4x4's would be in London? Wrong! That accolade goes to Perth and Harrogate, in fact, you might be surprised where you would be more likely to see a 4x4 than any other car.

Table 1: Source GMAP / DVLA

 Okay, so maybe to see convoys of silent Prius's in "whisper mode" like Airwolf, you would think that you would need to travel to where the Green Party have more voters than anywhere else, like Brighton, Lewisham or South Norwich? Wrong again, for that you would have to travel to Kensington, Chelsea and Notting Hill (precisely within the new extended congestion charge zone). In fact in areas where people are more likely to vote Green they are more likely to drive Smart Cars, Fiats, Citroen C5's and VW Campervans.

So, is having a fully recyclable, battery powered, quiet, eco-friendly vehicle a fashion statement or an attempt to appear cool and keep your credibility at your fortnightly dinner party, while in secret isolation you let the taps run when you brush your teeth and put more water than you need in your kettle.

Perhaps it is an understandable mis-match between the vehicles people aspire to and want to see, touch, test drive and want to know they can have serviced with 5-10 miles of where they live.

Or perhaps it is the actual distribution of dealers, their lack of incisive pre-cognitive dissonance-creating local marketing, and the standard "I stock what I sell and sell what I stock" ranging of vehicles on their forecourt just doesn't make it possible for people who are time poor these days and they end up compromising.

Then again if the CO2 emission theories are disproved, perhaps firstly country folk, then you and I will be driving 4x4's designed to run on wood. Garages already sell kindling, do they know something we don't?