City dwellers favour cars with sex appeal

The city is known for congested roads, confusing signs and stop-start traffic, but that doesn’t stop city dwellers from favouring cars with speed, power, satellite navigation and other innovative features. It all comes down to ’sex appeal’ as research from AA Personal Loans has shown. Country dwellers, on the other hand, are more likely to look at economy, size and safety when buying a new car.

City dwellers are looking for gadgets in their cars, with 11 per cent of city dwellers favouring these, compared with 7 per cent of country dwellers. Only 32 per cent of city dwellers will have a small family car.

Gas guzzling 4×4s are becoming less popular, with 17 per cent of the 4,000 people polled saying they would look at how green their new car would be. This is an increase of 11 per cent since March this year. And even in the country, car buyers (8 per cent) are more likely to consider an executive high spec car, with only 2 per cent considering a people carrier. People often change cars because their families are getting bigger and they may be looking for more reliable cars that are cheaper to run.

In other car news, insurers have been trying to work out whether James Bond could get insurance for his new Mondeo. No more Aston Martins for him, which will certainly save on the insurance premiums. Opinion is divided. Zurich points out that writing off three cars in four days, as 007 did in The World Is Not Enough would make him uninsurable. They suggest that Miss Moneypenny become the designated driver to take him to Casino Royale.  Meanwhile, Virgin has taken six famous write-offs into consideration to come with a whopping £7,000+ insurance premium for the daredevil secret agent’s latest motor, complete with ejector seats, rockets, bonnet vents, body kit, speed trap detector, sports harness and supercharger.