I hate cars. They're expensive, they're dirty, and to this eye they're mostly very boring to look at. But it must be acknowledged that for some souls the things are a subject of endless fascination. It's surprising, therefore, that it has taken RTE almost eight years to come up with a motoring programme to replace The Motor Show, which was axed in 1990: however, Drive!, starting next week, aims to fill the gap.
The title of the new programme reflects the changes that have taken place in the 1990s, with the sheepskin-jacketed, funny-gloved image of yore transformed into the New Boorishness of Top Gear and its spin-offs in the UK, whose influence Drive!'s producer and co-presenter Karl Tsigdinos acknowledges. "Quite regularly Top Gear is the highest-rated programme of the week on BBC 2," he says. "I think it's something that really gets into your blood, often when you're quite young - I fell in love with cars when I was a kid in Boston. Cars are a consumer item, but they're so much more than that as well. Even people who say they only have their car to get from A to B don't really mean it. They may have chosen a car as an anti-image statement. Either way, you're using it to make a statement about yourself, and it can also be like a piece of sculpture. And, if the road conditions are right, you can actually have fun doing it.
"We're looking to capture the glamour and the fun of driving," says Tsigdinos, a confessed fanatic who also edits Car Driver magazine. "We'll have comparative road tests between competing cars, but we also have the sexy, glamorous, wishful-thinking part of the programme, where we look at makes like the Aston Martin."
Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson and his ilk have made a significant contribution to the notion of car-loving as a form of Testosterone Replacement Therapy, but Tsigdinos points out that three of his new programme's seven presenters are women. "And at least two of them are better drivers than any of the men. We're endeavouring to get away from that laddish thing."
Lorraine Keane, the familiar voice of radio's AA Roadwatch, is joined by racing driver Sarah Kavanagh and champion rally driver Louise Nolan on the female half of the team which also includes 4x4 champion Richard Lyons, car enthusiast Michael Sheridan and motorbike expert Conor Feehan. The producers promise a zippy, fast-moving magazine show, with lots of music and inserts. "We're using new, digital-camera technology, and we also use a lot of music," Tsigdinos says.
As a confirmed non-driving sceptic, I find myself asking about the many downsides of motoring, such as the atrocious standards of driving in Ireland, the pollution and the traffic congestion. "We're tackling those kinds of issues as well, but I hope not in a way that's pedantic or preachy," says Tsigdinos. "The first programme has an item on using mobile phones in the car, and we'll also be showing footage of how people are running red traffic lights. We're trying to do it in an entertaining way. We don't want it to be like Nancy Reagan saying just say no to drugs, because that just makes people think drugs are fun." The comparison confirms all my worst fears about the car disease, a disease that's spreading as the rusting Datsuns of yesteryear are replaced by all manner of gleaming, bespoilered, turbo-charged, fuel-injected, inanely-named metal monsters.
Along with the property boom, the upsurge in car sales in recent years is the most tangible evidence of the economic upsurge, Tsigdinos agrees, so there's certainly plenty of interest in the practical nuts and bolts of purchasing your dream motor.
"It was a record year in 1997, with more than 136,000 sales, which surpassed the most optimistic predictions. They reckon that will settle back to around 100,000 this year, now the scrappage scheme is over. But when you consider that in the mid-1980s the market dipped to 53,000 units, and we were selling fewer cars than they did in Northern Ireland, you can imagine how bad things were, and how they've improved."
In Tuesday's opening programmes, Drive! will report on the Alfa Romeo 156 (this year's European Car of the Year, apparently) and the Avensis, Toyota's replacement for the Carina (who thinks up these names?). A regular section on classic cars ranges from the Bentley to the Citroen 2CV, and there'll be items on issues of interest to drivers . . . if they want to do one on the lunatic kicking back-bumpers as they whizz through the red pedestrian lights in Donnybrook village, they know where to find me.
Drive! starts on Network 2 on Tuesday at 10 p.m., with a repeat on Saturday at 4.50 p.m.