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There was whimsy from old ladies who yearned for the bark of a straight six and the glint of a wire wheel glimpsed with an expectant twitch of a curtain, and there was baser stuff from young men revolving around things that are or aren't possible in the cockpit of an MG. It is famously said that 40 per cent of American marriages are proposed in a car, but it seems that the British are keen to dispense with these stuffy and outdated formalities. Holly Burns of Glasgow sent me a treatise of mediaeval density and including some French words, which is no good to a man who needs something to remember for the pub, while the brevity consolation prize goes to Mike Coward of Southport, who said that a sports car is 'yee-haaa'. But then, so's square dancing.

I liked the suggestion of Reg Santer, from Horsham, that 'a sports car is all in the mind', until I realised that he was playing into the hands of manufacturers who claim sportiness for their mini-MPVs. Maurice Davies almost won with 'A Don Quixote story fused to an engine' and Paul Smith of Kendal seemed close with 'One being driven faster than it ought to be'. But then I realised that this would be true of a Kia Rio in any situation.

There was the philosophical, such as Anthony Marshall of Barnsley with 'a state of mind with wheels but without remorse or thought'. The snappy: 'one designed to go from A to A', according to Peter Gardner of St Albans. And the foreboding, from Mike Peers of Henley: 'Every man's dream, few men's reality, and every mother's nightmare.' Then again, I had a girlfriend like that.

You see, it's difficult, which is why this debate has raged for so long. But when I read that a sports car is 'An ode to joy/on open road/Wind in face,/Grin like Toad' I realised that the poet's skill with imagery was needed to define it in 12 words or fewer. Here's Hamish Kidd, possible former lyricist with Wham:

Free as air

Wind in hair

Heel 'n' toe

Let's go

Brrrm brrrm!

Or, drawing heavily on Spike Milligan, Ian Hourston of Orkney:

A sports car is

A car with fizz

Forget your quiz

It's simple, viz:

A whiz.

And Bill Richardson of Guisborough, apparently a student of Hilaire Belloc:

A powerful engine in a saucy shell,

Built to go like bloody hell.

But I thought I'd stumbled upon an undiscovered fragment of Ted Hughes when I opened an offering that defines nothing precise about the sports car yet somehow captures its essence completely. The winner is Alan Lidmila of Sheffield with 'The floored howl, dawn clear undulating blacktop wheel-gripped view ahead.'

That should silence the car bores in my local.

ONLY THE FRENCH WOULD BUILD A CAR DESIGNED TO BREAK DOWN

I've spent the last week driving a car with a bad battery, a dicky charging circuit and a less than reliable starter motor.

Come to think of it, I've spent much of the last 20 years driving cars like this and, to be perfectly honest, it's bloody boring. Few things in life are more useless than a car that won't start, so if its ability to do so is in any doubt, the best thing to do is leave it running.

All those years of jump leads and bump starts have scarred me. Every time I shut a car down, even a new one, a part of me wonders if it's going to start again. Irrational, I know, but to me it's rather like that sound of a car horn at the beginning of the Stones' 'Honky Tonk Women'. I've heard it a thousand times, but every time it comes on the radio in the car I look around to see who's beeping at me.

For this reason, I won't be test driving the new Citroen C2 'Stop&Start', a car that turns itself off every time it comes to a halt in the interests of the environment. Even if you simply pause at a zebra crossing, it cuts out. I'd be a bag of nerves.

I know, because around 10 years ago I tried something similar in the form of the VW EcoGolf, I think it was called. This was a normal Golf with a whopping battery and some rudimentary electronic controller that killed it at traffic lights and then fired it up anew when