Alexei Sayle: Fear that drives me to hire a Fiat

The main road that passes by my house in Spain is known as the "Carretera de la Muerte" - The Road of Death - due to the number of deadly crashes on it. But it is not fatal accidents that I have come to fear but something else, which I'll do almost anything to avoid.

In our part of Andalusia, there exists a complex network of water channels called acequias, supposedly built by the Moors, that bring water, solely by the force of gravity, from the high Sierras to flood and irrigate the olive, lemon and orange groves that are the area's main crops. These open channels, up to a metre deep in places, often run along the edge of the narrow single-track roads that lead to the villages. Given that you are often forced to reverse, in order to accommodate vehicles coming the other way, everybody at some time or other ends up, as they say, "in the acequias".

It is accepted by the locals, with an Iberian fatalism worthy of Lorca, that at some point your car is going to topple into one of these channels, but it is this that I dread. As I drive along I look into the turbid water and imagine, with a sick feeling in my gut, the horrible sensation of my hire car toppling over on its side as the wheels crash into the ditch, the water lapping around my feet, the feeling of shame when I have to call out the tow truck, the embarrassment of telling the hire company.

When I first started travelling to Spain about 10 years ago, I would always rent the best and biggest car the hire firm possessed, but now, instead, I demand the cheapest, smallest hatch on the lot in the hope that by driving a tiny car I'll lessen my chances of going "in the acequias". In the neighbourhood, people think that my financial situation must have taken a terrible tumble, since I've gone from arriving in C-Class Mercedes and Opel Vectras to rattling up in Hyundai Getzes and Fiat Pandas.

Whenever I'm in a foreign country, I always go to a newsagent and buy their World Car Guide. Every country does one, a magazine that lists and comments on every make of car on the planet, and it's interesting how national character comes through in the way they treat the listings.

American guides are invariably upbeat about every single vehicle, finding something good to say about even the crappiest model; the Australians are dry and sarcastic; while the French will often compare a mid-range saloon to the dying call of a swan heard from the blood-stained hotel bedroom of a murdered gigolo.

Last week, I treated myself to my first Spanish guide, Todos Los Coches Del Mundo. My favourite section in such guides is where they do a survey of all the funny cars not imported into their territory. I particularly like India, a sort of automotive Australia where bizarre cars can flourish with no natural predators. But suddenly it struck me, while I was staring at a photo of a Gujarati Prince (a car based on the rear-engined Hillman Imp but, for India, now front-wheel drive) that what I was really searching for in all these magazines was something I was never going to find - something perhaps called the Seat Anti-Acequias. A car specifically designed not to fall into the water channels in Andalusia.