Last weekend, for example, I drove to see an old mate who lives in Devon. The journey took three hours. Three hours! Three hours looking out of a window at the arse-ends of diesel Vectras and the like. There is no other activity in my life on which I spend such lengthy and uninterrupted stretches of my time.

This is why the car will not be the ruin of the world, as some are claiming. Soon, most people will be sick of it entirely, and all because it's too slow to be of any use. Concorde was retired not because it was too noisy, too wasteful of resources or too expensive; it was because it wasn't fast enough.

A journey that took only half as long as it did on a 747 was still a lifetime in an age when you can download a whole album in a minute without even having to put your trousers on. The car will be a victim of its own sloth, just as the horse was.

I believe, in fact, that it will be usurped by something that moves through the largely unexploited medium of the air above our heads, and at truly huge speeds. The trip to Devon will then take just a few minutes, leaving plenty of time for piano practice.

But the car will not disappear entirely, and to understand why not, you only have to look at Britain's canals. I doubt that any coal or jute is being moved on them nowadays, because canals, too, eventually became too slow.

But canals are being reopened all the time, and they are all full of gaily painted narrow boats crewed by enthusiasts of rustic musical instruments. These people are simply enjoying boating as a hobby.

I'm sure cars will turn into a hobby as well. At the moment, it is immoral to price people off the road because they have no choice in the matter. Most of them would rather not be there anyway. But when the roads are reserved for those who are simply having a laugh, road tax can be raised to £2,000 a year to pay for the upkeep.

Why not? No one will be forced to drive - they'll be crossing the country at 1,000mph in antimatter-powered levitating balls, and then settling down to a few hours of Chopin.

In any case, plenty of people spend more than £2,000 on golf club membership or skiing equipment. We can have road pricing, too. When driving is just a game, road pricing will seem no more unreasonable than having to pay to use the pool table in the pub.

Which sort of brings me to the new Porsche 911 Turbo. As a means of getting anywhere quickly, it's just as useless as my Fiat Panda. But imagine how much fun you'll have in a car that powerful when you don't need to be anywhere in particular.