Broader awareness of manufacturers' 'exploitation' of motorists' dependency on their cars for private gain could be an important piece of ammunition to break down the false cultural divides manufactured by the car industry and their servants in government.

They are underpinned by, but also reinforce car dependency, trapping consumers in debt spirals while dazzling them with over-engineered (and increasingly large) vehicles, which are, of course, not used most of the time, and which steal public space and threaten other road users.

In part, this is achieved by a harsh regime of threatened vehicle repossession, which is reported in detail to financial markets.

And here’s the rub - real wages have flat-lined in the same period PCPs have come to the fore.

So you need to be very sure that consumers will prioritise car finance repayments above all else.

PCPs are deeply imbricated into financial markets, where financial investors bid for PCP ‘receivables’ - bundles of consumer finance repayments.

These investors are highly sensitive to the risk of consumer default.

I found that the rise of PCPs in Britain has been associated with greater borrowing levels and higher value acquisitions, in real terms.

Whereas under HP motorist retained ownership at the end of the finance deal, with PCPs, consumers are faced with an unaffordable ‘lump sum’ if they want to keep the car. Of course, most swap for a new model.

In Britain, for example, registrations of new vehicles began to tail off in the early 2000s.

Most importantly, cars are made at a massive scale in massive plants. It is a simple truth of car economics that to remain economically sustainable, cars need to be continually pumped out at a vast scale. Any reduction of demand risks writing-off massive capital investment.

The #WarOnCars is underpinned by a false polarisation between car drivers and the car industry on one side, and the rest of us on the other.

In my recent paper, I show how the car industry has deliberately pushed motorists into ever greater debt, to save itself.

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doi.org/10.1080/1356...