And so, Porsche has turbocharged the new 911, Ferrari has introduced an 800bhp Enzo, Aston is beavering away with its new DBS and, imminently, Mercedes is expected to announce plans for a new collaboration with McLaren.

The message is clear. As fast as politicians wrap the motor industry up with noise, emission and safety red tape, car designers are unravelling the constraints with more and more power.

No really. We already have a 240bhp Golf. That's twice as much as we were given 20 years ago and if that rate of change keeps going, people learning to drive today will finish their career in a family hatchback with 1,000bhp under the bonnet. Nice.

We've already got family saloons with 500bhp to play with. That's 100 more than Jackie Stewart had when he won the F1 Championship in 1973. What's more, Mitsubishi can sell you a car that develops 200bhp per litre. And it's only 20 years since Daihatsu became the first car maker to sell a car with half that. We're on a roll, boys. And I'm loving it.

However, some say this is nothing more than a last hurrah before the oil runs out, that the engineers are having one last party with their outdated 19th-century toy box before they're forced by circumstance to put down their petrol and pick up some potato peelings instead.

The most recent scare story suggests that the world's supply of oil, gas and coal will be exhausted in about 30 years' time. And if that's true, there's no doubt the big car makers are being irresponsible, gorging on the fat of the land now when they know full well a famine is just around the corner. Only an imbecile would do that.

There's plenty of evidence to suggest it's true. At present, people in the Third World use half a gigajoule of energy a year, compared to the average American, who gets through 300 gigajoules. And 40 burgers. But as we keep being told, it's not the 'Third World' any more. It's the 'developing world', and that's where the problems lie.