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First of all I would like to thank all of you for posting your super clever suggestions for getting my backside into an interesting seven-seater.

Grateful as I am for the input – I must confess to having completely ignored it. Which is why I’m now the proud owner of a 112,000 mile Volvo V70, 2000 on the “W” and powered by the 2.4-litre petrol engine.

It does fulfil the basic criteria of seating seven, although with two of those rear-facing pop-up seats in the boot.

If you’re calling about the car, it’s already gone. Selling my 2001 Seat Toledo TDI has delivered a fascinating insight into the dynamics of the modern car market. Main dealers might be filled with tumbleweed and racks of yellowing brochures, but demand for sub-£3000 diesels invokes an analogy concerning hot cakes.

Indeed, despite 93,000 miles and a reasonable crop of stone chips, my Toledo sold to the first punter to come and see it – for just £150 less than the keen price I was asking for it. I’m not surprised: soaring fuel prices mean that a realistic 48mpg is hugely compelling at the bottom end of the market.

I think that I’m about to do something rather distasteful and quite painful. No, I won’t be joining Sir Max for one of his weekly dungeon sessions – this is far worse. You see, I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to go out and buy myself a seven-seater. My actual circumstances haven’t changed – Mrs. R isn’t in the family way again – but for all kinds of reasons my clan needs a minibus.

So after my last post on the Scirocco I found myself cruising the internet looking for relevant examples. And, after a bit of lateral thinking on the subject of German coupes, I started looking at some online 944s.

This Porsche is a sort of heavy metal Scirocco, and for me one of the very best sportscars of all time. Even more so – and prepare yourself for sacrilege here – I’ve always preferred it to the 911, what with a proper water-cooled engine in the right place and far fewer associations with red-brace wearing merchant bankers.

Sorry to start the new year as harbinger of doom, but my new year prediction is the collapse in supercar prices that I reckon we'll be getting sometime before the end of December.

Predicting what's going to happen at the top of the motor trade has always been an imprecise science. It plays by a different set of rules when compared to the business of slinging Mondeos or vending Vectras, and the correlation between the health of the wider economy and the mega-car market is never completely precise. The early '90s collapse in supercar values happened some time after the rest of the economy had started its inexorable slide downwards.

The luxury manufacturers still have nice long waiting lists - but these aren't growing. Indeed, a recent conversation with a salesman for one of the most exotic brands revealed that he'd been sharing the showroom with little more than tumbleweed for the last two months. City boys are seeing their bonuses wither - and many of them are also starting to wonder whether £150,000 of toy is really the best place to plough their soft-earned.

Went to British Car Auctions the other day, mostly for a classic car sale viewing, but also got drawn into a prestige auction that was running at the time.

There were any number of BMWs and Mercs going through, some of them rare groove stuff such as M5s and a mouthwatering CL600 that went for £14k, but what got me wishing I'd registered to bid/arranged to borrow funds/had somewhere to park the spoils, were a couple of cars that were a little out of the ordinary for this particular auction. Past experience (though very limited) suggests that the unusual tends to earn a lower price, because that's not what the traders came for.