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Your support makes all the difference.The car geography of Britain, the intricate pattern of where Rolls- Royces cluster and Skodas are most to be found, is being revealed by a pioneering computer analysis of Britain's 28.6m vehicle licences.
The study by Leeds University throws up some revelations: Harrogate in North Yorkshire, for instance, is the Volvo capital of Britain, the town with a higher percentage of those affluent family-plus-dog carriers than any other, while a "boy racer corridor" has been identified, of Ford XR2s and XR3s burning rubber, from Essex via north London and Hertfordshire to Milton Keynes.
The analysis has been carried out by a Leeds University- affiliated company, GMAP, whose chief executive, the Professor of Geography, Martin Clarke, believes your car can provide as much of a personal profile as a detailed CV.
"Whether you like it or not, your car locates you in our socio-economic system," Professor Clarke said. "It is true that generally if you know the car, you know the person, and that if you know the area, you can now know the type of car. That means you can link a kind of person to certain areas. That is extremely important for all kinds of targeted advertising."
The study, which has analysed ownership across Britain by postal code, shows the most popular car in the country, overall, to be the Ford Escort; it is the most popular car for male drivers, while the Ford Fiesta is the most popular car with women.
Essex man, or at least Essex young man, is confirmed by the study as living up to his boy racer image: the boy racer's favourite car, the Escort XR3, is the most popular set of wheels in a corridor that stretches across the county from Southend to Romford, and then on up to Enfield, Stevenage and Milton Keynes.
Furthermore, the sporty version of the Fiesta, the XR2, is a hit with Essex girls: it is most popular in Southend, as well as in Sutton in south London and Telford in the Midlands.
"The car market is not homogenous and there are huge regional variations," said Professor Clarke. "You get more XR3s in Essex than in north Wales because the cultures, occupations and aspirations are so different. There is no mass yuppie culture in north Wales. There are a lot of boy racers in Essex and lots of straight roads for them. Young people there may be seen to be thrusting but with modest incomes.
"You don't get so many Jaguars and Mercedes in Essex because they tend to be driven by middle-aged men who are compensating for the fact they are getting older. They also have more money than the XR2 drivers."
The study has many more revelations: four-wheel-drive vehicles, it shows, are most popular in the Shetland Islands, and in Llandrindod Wells in Powys, Wales, where they are needed for farming, and central London, where they are needed for showing off. Lerwick, the Shetland capital, has the greatest percentage of Land Rover Discoveries (3.53 per cent - eight times the national average), but one in every 100 vehicles in London is also a Discovery.
"Most four-wheel vehicles never cross a river or go off-road," said Professor Clarke. "You clearly have no need for one in the high street, but these drivers do have a need for status. It's a question of vanity, and the car industry relies heavily on snobbishness - otherwise everyone would go around driving a basic Lada which gets you from A to B in one piece.
"A car will tell people a lot about the person. A Skoda driver [Norwich is Britain's Skoda capital by percentage, Nottingham has the most - 4,752] used to be a butt for jokes, but now it tells you they know a good deal when they see one. Skoda is the most improved car over the past five years." In contrast, drive through the City in central London and one in six cars will be a BMW, Jaguar or Mercedes - though there are 45 Skoda drivers fighting their corner in the postal area.
All this information will be of great use to advertisers, Professor Clarke says.
"BMWs gather in clusters where new wealth has sprung up, like Reading and the M4 corridor. These drivers are more aspiration- and status-conscious. They are also vital wealth indicators to marketing companies."
Harrogate is the country's Volvo capital, with 3,564 examples - one in every 15 cars in the town. Drive a Volvo and you may not be particularly style-conscious but you are driving a car with a lot of storage space.
"That suggests you will use that space at some time," Professor Clarke explains. "Harrogate is a prosperous and staid area full of people who own a labrador, wear a Barbour coat and have three rowdy children in the back of their car. Somebody making fitted kitchens, DIY or other home products would find it worthwhile to mailshot their products in the area."
A spokeswoman for Volvo said: "Harrogate has always been a very good area for us - it's an affluent area which suits the upmarket image we look for."
But Professor Clarke warned: "An area with lots of Mazda drivers would need a different approach. They usually don't have children and would not have a great interest in pensions and kitchens."
Equally, a car repair firm would make use of research that told it where there was a high concentration of older vehicles, and set up a site supplying replacement parts.
Professor Clarke said: "When you look at things by area there is a tendency for people to conform to stereotype. You can't escape it. Whatever Swampy and his friends may say, most people require a car and aspire to a certain type of vehicle."
Who drives what and where
Most popular car:
Male buyers: Ford Escort
Female buyers: Ford Fiesta
Overall: Ford Escort
Car popularity as a percentage of the total number of vehicles in each postal area:
Bentley/Rolls-Royce: West End of London (0.63%); West London (0.47%); Harrogate (0.35%)
Volvo: Harrogate (6.23%); Truro (5.36%); Llandrindod Wells (5.00%)
Ford Mondeo: Watford (6.83%); West End of London (5.66%); Croydon (5.49%)
Land Rover Discovery: Lerwick (3.53%); Llandrindod Wells (1.50%); London West Central (1.26%)
BMW/Jaguar/Mercedes: East Central London (15.66%); West London (9.81%); Slough (8.61%)
Skoda: Norwich (1.45%); Peterborough (1.43%); Dartford(1.33%)
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