THE MIDDLE LANE

TGTV script editor Sam Philip examines the link between, er, cars and infidelity

This month I received an email informing me that my Volkswagen-driving husband was probably cheating on me. I was less upset by this news than you might expect, mostly because I don’t have a husband who drives a Volkswagen, or indeed, a husband at all.

Welcome, then, to the world of the automotive press release, where dubious research never stands in the way of an attentiongrabbing headline. This particular dubious research came courtesy of a website describing itself as “the UK’s largest extramarital dating site”, which surveyed 2,500 members and discovered that its male members, as it were, most frequently drove VWs (22 per cent), followed by BMWs and Mercs. Should VW take this as a compliment? Unclear, but you suspect if it replaces all that nasty Dieselgate stuff when you Google “VW cheat device”, they’ll be all over it.

The least unfaithful brand was, apparently, Fiat, driven by 0.2 per cent of adulterers. No word on if this is because Fiat drivers are loyal, or simply spend too much time marooned on the hard shoulder to contemplate infidelitous nookie.

According to the commissioners of this research, their survey was proof that “flashy cars and sex appeal go together”.

Let’s break this one down. Firstly, having met supercar owners, I’d say “no they don’t”. Second, with all due respect to VW and its upstanding range of cars, do a diesel Sharan or 1.0-litre Up really qualify as “flashy”? (And also, is membership of an extramarital dating site proof of sex appeal? If you’re genuinely irresistible to potential suitors, surely you won’t be on a dating website. You’ll be on all those potential suitors.)

But, more importantly, it doesn’t stack up logically, does it? I’m no statistician, but even if a lot of adulterers are Volkswagen drivers, that doesn’t imply, necessarily, that a lot of VW drivers are adulterers. After all, I reckon close to 100 per cent of adulterers own socks, but you can’t go around accusing every sock-wearer of cheating on their partner.

Surely “one in five potential adulterers drives a VW” is only interesting if we know the rate of VW ownership among a similar demographic cross-section of non-adulterers, a stat the survey sadly neglected to provide. Honestly, sometimes it’s almost as if these press releases are bashed out without care for scientific rigour, purely in the hope of snaring a few lazy journalists on deadline with a column to fill.

And anyhow, even if you accept that all VW drivers are adulterous cads, that only raises more questions. Do adulterers choose VWs? Or does driving a Polo cause unfaithful thoughts? If your husband returns from a car dealer having chopped in his Clio RS for a Touran 1.6 TDI SE, is that proof he’s doing the dirty with Janet from HR? Or has he just had enough of trying to wedge three kids into the back of a French supermini? I’d say “more research is needed”. But in this case it really, really isn’t.

“YOU CAN’T GO ACCUSING EVERY SOCK-WEARER OF CHEATING ON HIS WIFE”