The Doctor is getting another car. You may remember that his first car slid gently into the front of another vehicle in a rain swept muddied Devon lane at Easter time last year. That car, a Maestro, was too lacking in value to warrant repair. So after many months squatting in the street it was sold and towed away for the princely sum of ú20, never to be seen again. The insurance companies are still haggling.

Being young and one year from qualifying, the options for a replacement car are stark. Even if trading up, the horrors that await one on the forecourt beggar belief. We have just visited the Trade Centre, a vast open air warehouse of cars where every price ends in several nines and every car has had its radio pillaged. Acres of checked upholstery spattered by infant and adult puke lurk inside rusting, coat hanger aerialed, multi-coloured bodies. Clocked or not clocked, the cars exude an air of dreary weariness reminiscent of the mighty England soccer team as they rolled over in front of the Swiss in the opening game of Euro 96.

It is hard to be surrounded by thousands of vehicles, which were designed and manufactured with care, and presumably loved by their original owners, in such a sorry state of repair. A sort of Battersea Dogs Home, where unwanted British dogs are housed, for cars. Mongrels and pedigree breeds lumped together in misery and distress, abandoned to whatever fate awaits them. Perhaps the car sticker 'A dog is for life not just for Christmas' should be reprinted as 'A car is for life not just for August' and worn around the necks of dogs.

What we were after was a nifty Fiat Tipo, not too little not too large. The Doctor and his pals and his paramour are not pygmies. Thus a large interior is required. The insurance companies frown on vehicles whose engines exceed 1.4 litres on the assumption that they will be driven flat out at 100 mph at all times. As discussed in this column before, all modern cars with the exception of the Trabant and the Fiat Cinquecento (which does 94) reach 100mph, a mere 30mph in excess of the speed limit. Why the manufacturers are not arrested for selling unlawful weapons, I do not know. Perhaps the joy and income arising from catching so many speeding, by cameras and police cars, which metamorphose from red BMWs, has given the authorities good reason to encourage the car makers. Strange this though, as many millions are spent on public service advertisements advising us to 'Kill our Speed'. Even stranger is the notice attached to the speed camera logo at the side of the Chiswick Flyover, the main gateway into London from the West, one of whose pillars reputedly contains the mortal remains of the mad axeman, a useful member of the Kray Brothers Gang in the early 1960's. This notice has the legend 'Police Enforcement Cameras'. As it is the speed limit they are enforcing, I am confused. If it said 'Police Force Cameras' it would make more sense.

Back to the search for the big car with the little engine. Having wandered through the many sections devoted to cars of various makes and then cheapos corner, what a duff lot they were, we could not find any Tipos. Having asked one of the friendly staff, he told us they were on the far side past the Volvos and the 4 wheel drive vehicles. Eventually we found one pathetic remnant of a Tipo crouched amongst other sordid hulks. It was ripped and torn like the aftermath of a Bosnian siege. Sadly we turned away to fresh forecourts and pastures new. Daunted we were, but the search will go on.

All thoughts have returned to the final year pathology viva on Friday. chrome has given way to chromosomes, paintwork to platelets. But the vibes coming from deepest Putney, via the ever alert Mrs Fox, are that the Tipo has lost any attraction and a Golf is now the target of the medicine man's affections. I must cure my slice before we go on the next expedition into the barren wastelands of used car lots.

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