Riding along in my automobile, with an Audi in my sights. Brmmm, brmmm

IOVERTOOK an Audi the other day. High fives all round. Another lifetime goal achieved. A birdie at the seventeenth, an omelette cooked without it sticking to the pan, the words of ‘Woods of Gortnamona’ performed without a hitch, and now an Audi overtaken. I may die happy and fulfilled. What is it about Audis? I spotted this one emerging from a side road onto the motorway which runs from Dublin to Our Town.

Audis were bred for motorways, so I deferred to superior horsepower by slowing down to allow my fellow road user out in front of me. The ‘vorsprung durch technik’ merchant availed of this little courtesy and then I waited for him to take off in the manner of a startled stag, as is typical of Audi drivers.

Instead I found myself a kilometre on still looking up his exhaust pipe at close quarters as we plodded along at a modest rate well shy of the 120 km/h limit. Two kilometres down the road and there was no sign of him accelerating to assert the arrogant right claimed by Audi owners everywhere to live life perpetually in the fast lane.

This really was most peculiar, a high spec product of the autobahn chugging along in the style of a Morris Minor driven by an elderly farmer on a bendy country road in the 1960s.

I indicated my intention to move right, expecting that such audacity would surely trigger a response from the man in front. No change. I moved right, feeling certain as I laid down the gauntlet that this would be interpreted as a hostile act to be met with a burst of searing, sneering speed and a Dick Dastardly laugh. Again no change.

I pulled level and glanced across at the profile of this unusual individual who chose to coast in low gear rather than follow the compulsive high velocity traditions of his automotive tribe. He turned out to be a little fellow of late middle-age, wearing a cap and staring rigidly ahead with no break in concentration to spare me a sideways glance.

This was no typical Audi driver, I thought, before easing myself ahead and gradually putting distance between my jalopy and his high pedigree racer. But what would I know about a typical Audi driver? Mostly they zoom past me in a blur at a rate beyond my scope and comprehension, allowing me no opportunity to assess.

It could be that this middle-aged man of diminutive stature is a typical Audi driver. Or maybe most Audi drivers are women. Or maybe most Audi drivers wear pin-stripe suits and diamond ear-rings. I really cannot tell. All I know from my vantage point in the slow lane is that far too many Audi drivers hide behind tinted glass, leading me to speculate that they may be rock stars, or newsreaders, or perhaps arms dealers.

What is it about Audis? The brand with the four rings is the one most desired by the motoring Irish public, yet they make up less than five per cent of the national car fleet.

No more than one vehicle in every 20 is an Audi, yet it seems that one in every four of the vehicles that leave me for dead is an Audi. Either they all wait until I am out and about or else Audis are routinely driven faster, a great deal faster, than the average car on the average main road – the man in the cap excepted.

Admiration and envy are mixed in equal parts among the rest of us as we watch yet another Audi smoothly crest the hill ahead and disappear from our view forever. Yet I tell myself that I am happy at the wheel of my jalopy, my little bubble of comfort, my bolt-hole on four wheels, my nest.

It is of French manufacture, a Maurice Chevalier, of mature vintage, without the luxury of air conditioning, or Bluetooth, or a yoke that goes beep-beep-beep if I try reversing into a brick wall.

It is called a Maurice Chevalier in honour of the entertainer who sang ‘Ah, yes, I remember it well.’ The lyric of the song portrays an elderly individual looking back nostalgically at a past that probably never existed. So the jalopy likes to give the impression that it used to out-run all comers, though nowadays restrained by a sinister clanking noise and a horrid shudder which click in whenever the pedal is to the metal.

At least the old warhorse will go to the breaker’s yard having overtaken an Audi.