I SEEM to recall that after I was condemned to this corner of your Saturday paper that I established fairly quickly my interest in cars.

I mean, I wouldn't call myself a car nut, or a petrolhead, or a car lover; maybe a car liker. Yes: a liker of cars.

I've been equally upfront about the kind of cars this car liker likes - mainly ones I can't afford, motors which possess a virility and ferocity I can only dream of possessing. If good cars were a party, I wasn't on the guest list. Until now.

With luck, readers who loathe car chat will have moved on to the bridge column and I'll assume that if you're sticking with me then you want the lowdown, the gen, the skinny. Thing is, there's nothing skinny about the Prussian palomino that has been squatting in the three-bedroomed ground-floor flat of my mind since last week.

Phrases such as full-fat, bad boy and hot rod don't apply to the rocket I'm seriously considering becoming the next pilot of. It's more stately - and deadly - than anything those epithets imply. It's an AMG C55, and by golly I WANT IT.

If you're thinking I've won the lottery and am doing my best to lower my tax burden, think again: if I'd won the lottery I wouldn't be writing this column. The C55 - an estate, which means I can partially justify it for its practicality - is actually 10 years old and thus a fraction of the £51,000 price-tag it came with when box-fresh, though its presence remains undiminished from the day it left the production line.

Its current guv'nor is Nick, whom I encountered on the Mercedes-Benz Owners Club website and who appears to qualify as a car nut, petrolhead and car lover rolled into one. He lives in Essex, which isn't ideal, but he's open to taking my Saab 9-3 Viggen (see columns passim) plus a just-about-affordable wad of shekels in exchange for his diligently fettled and riotously powerful German V8. See that guy gnawing his knuckle? That's me. There's saliva everywhere.

Stats, then: 362bhp; 376lb/ft torque at 4,000rpm; 0-60 in 5.2 seconds; penury in the blink of an eye - the road tax won't be cheap and the petrol bills are astronomical. For an otherwise environmentally conscientious fellow it makes no sense whatsoever.

There's a whopping flaw in the plan, though. Until I've moved house - to somewhere with a garage - there's no way I'd leave it parked on the street. Which means (probably) having to leave it in the barn at my friend's gaff outside Glasgow. Preposterous, I know, and probably all the evidence you need to call me a car nut.

Shame. I was rather fond of being a car liker.