thegarageblog.co.uk : Supercars at the supermarket-and not a blue badge in sight.

Despite spending most of my waking hours slaving away at the garage, at the weekend I sometimes find time to fulfil my family duties, which includes a weekly visit to the supermarket. Now, I actually enjoy shopping and a trip to Tesco doesn’t daunt me at all, even with a pair of toddlers in tow. One advantage of travelling with small children, is that you get to park in one of the designated ‘parent & child’ parking spaces. These are great as they have extra space each side to allow you to open the car doors, and are generally situated fairly close to the entrance of the shop. Following in the footsteps of his car-mad father, my eldest son, at almost four years old can identify most brands of car with a single glance. As we walk along the rows of cars in the parent and child spaces, he barely mentions anything about the rows of ‘family’ cars. For instance, he never says, “Look Daddy, there’s a Toyota Previa” and as far as I’m aware he’s never even comented on a Zafira (even the GSi version!). In fact, his interest in the cars in Tesco’s car park is rarely aroused until we come to the rows of spaces just outside the entrance, that are clearly reserved for the sole use of disabled drivers or their registered passenger.

You see, the most expensive and exotic cars in the car park appear to be driven by persons of limited mobility. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve seen a Maserati Quattroporte, BMW M6, Range Rover Sport, Mercedes ML63 AMG, Mercedes CLS55 AMG, several Ford Mustangs, the odd Bentley Continental, a Honda 2000 and numerous BMW M3’s, all parked in the dedicated disabled places. By far the most outrageous vehicle though was a Cadillac Escalade - a huge 6.0 V8-powered 4WD, that’s normally driven by premiership footballers with poor taste. This was black, with blacked-out windows and 22″ chrome wheels! Sometimes, parked amongst these behemoths is the odd Renault Clio, Peugeot 206, Honda Jazz or even a Renault Kangoo with integrated wheelchair lift. These smaller and more sensible cars parked in the disabled bays are noticable for another reason - they generally display a disabled parking permit in the windscreen. I’ve never noticed a similar badge of entitlement in any of the other cars though. What I have noticed though is that on the odd occasion when I’ve seen an owner of one of these cars returning, they are often distinguishable by some certain features. The first (and most noticable) characteristic is that they generally men, who appear to display no visible sign of their disability and in some cases, are wearing an outfit that might be more suited to playing golf or visiting the gym. The other thing I have noticed is that they are rarely carrying much shopping, other than maybe a bunch of flowers or a bottle of wine.

I may be wrong, but I have formed several theories about the drivers of these extraordinarily expensive cars. Maybe they posess a divine right to park right outside the shop entrance (either in a disabled space, or in the ‘pickup zone’) due to their own self-importance. It might be that time is so valuable to these people that the extra three minutes that it’d take for them to walk from a ‘normal’ space to the shop could be a matter of life and death. Perhaps I’m completely wrong, and that all these people are genuinely suffering from limited mobility, but just happen to be extremely wealthy and mad about cars.

It seems that the general sense of outrage at the blatant abuse of disabled parking facilities at supermarkets has now prompted them to take action. At some stores, cars that are parked in disabled spaces that don’t display a valid badge are being clamped. The only flaw to this that I can forsee is that for many of the cars I’ve seen parked in my local Tesco store, a regular wheel clamp just won’t be big enough to fit around the huge tyres that these cars have!