When the E-Type Jaguar was unveiled at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show, the ladies present probably emitted dainty gasps of delight, cleverly disguised (these were far more conservative times) as horror. For the curves and contours of the company's flagship two-seater couldn't have been more phallic if they'd peeled it out of a giant, pink, translucent rubber sock instead of pulling back a screen. The thinking behind the now iconic penile profile was more than mischievous innuendo - Jaguar's design boffins clearly realised that the association between rampant virility and all things motorised is as deeply ingrained in the male psyche as rugby and sex.

Evidence of our doe-eyed man-crush on our four-wheeled friends excretes, musk-like, from the skin of Western society's very cultural being. Television channels called Men and Motors get taken seriously. Top Gear is currently one of the most popular shows around the world, and has a touring exhibition/show to boot. And we'll happily part with cash to see any movie with a "high-octane" car chase like The Fast and the Furious, The Italian Job and anything involving Bourne, Bond or Batman, even though we've read the reviews and know we'd probably get more enjoyment out of crashing our own cars.

If you need further proof of man's true love, just talk to the wife of London banker Jason Barron, who replaced the wall between his house and garage with glass so that his beloved Ferrari Dino would be permanently on display. (If you're reading, Mrs Barron, it could be worse - Jordan Witham, 20, from Missouri in the US, recently admitted to having had penetrative sex, via the exhaust pipe, with his Volkswagen Beetle. For four years.)

At motor shows around the world, bemused eight-year-old boys are led by the hands of their purring, drooling fathers through automotive porn parlours of chrome, leather and metal. They try to decipher their dad and his chums' deep, reverent murmurs about electronic brakeforce distribution and cobalt-chromium-tungsten alloys, and they're sure to be hooked by the time they get home. Frankly, we're obsessed.

It's automatic

So why is it, exactly, that a mere sniff of an oily rag can drag us away from the booty-shaking babes on Saturday morning music shows and into the garage for a rub and a tinker? Ask this question down at your local and you'll probably get a barrage of misogynistic gems flung at you: "My car doesn't answer back/expect a call/tell me what to wear" and so on. But there has to be more to it than this. For Top Gear Australia co-host Steve Pizzati, it comes down to a primal hangover from our days in the caves. "Any bloke who tells you [the male-car bond] is part of a complex, higher part of your consciousness is kidding themselves," he says. "Women are naturally endowed with sophisticated minds. For men, life's a more primitive business, and the instinct to control a car is the same as the caveman's need to tame wild horses." That might explain why watching a car go round and round in a circle makes us wish we could die and come back as Scott Dixon.

On the subject of speed and the reckless hammer-and-tongs way in which men drive their cars, Professor Geoffrey Beattie of Manchester University also looked to our chest-beating days in a 2008 report addressed to the UK government's transport committee: "Stone-Age man did not drive," he wrote, "but the legacy of his hunting, aggressive and risk-taking past - qualities that enabled him to survive and mate - are still evident in the way in which a man typically drives his car."

One sweet ride

As if we need encouragement, there's evidence to suggest that women are turned on by the sound of a big engine. A study by a British psychologist David Moxon - commissioned by luxury-car insurer Hiscox (take note of the name) - found 100 per cent of female subjects experienced an increased secretion of the sex hormone testosterone when they heard the roar of a Maserati's engine (the sound of a non-luxury car, meanwhile, caused women's arousal levels to dip). It figures that on some primitive sub-conscious level, men have worked this out. Despite traffic campaigns in New Zealand specifically aimed at men, like the "Driving's in the blood" ads, our gender is still prone to shredding up tarmac in our gas-guzzlers, bobbing our heads to loud, bad music.

Is there anything about this ridiculous display of affection towards a piece of metal that appeals to the fairer sex? If so, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ewan McGregor (the smug bastards) are one step ahead of the game. Both drive a Toyota Prius hybrid electric car, which to most men is about as macho as a bloke in heels and hot pants but, to women, could be the mechanical equivalent of walking around with a puppy in your arms.

It's common to think of the car as an extension of a man's...ego. "It's normally guys who use one hand on the steering wheel, which is a non-verbal indicator of ownership and identity," says psychologist Michael Burge. "Women generally use two, which expresses a separation from the car." This goes some way towards explaining why women name their cars, giving it a separate personality, while for us blokes, the car's a nameless extension of ourselves. Kind of a growling, moving manifesto of manhood that non-verbally shouts buzz-terms like "I've made it" or "I'm hung like a horse" to passers-by.

Give us some space

Another thing that makes men worship their wheels is our age-old need for man-space. You know, that same instinct that spurs a man to keep a stash of porn and cigars in his shed. "Having one's own space is a way to define and establish an identity," says Sam Martin, author of Manspace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory.

There's even a social-historical reason for men to imbue the motorised man-space with male potency. Motoring first became a cult in 1950s America: the country was rich, the oil cheap, the geography expansive. This is the same period that the concept of "teenager" exploded into being and, with the cultural climate still too conservative to take a girl to your bedroom, the car became a domain of sexual conquest.

So where will these economically turbulent times leave the relationship between man and his best friend? The credit crunch is looming over the automotive industry like a burly lesbian holding a castration scalpel. NZ's new car sales in January this year were down 30 per cent on the same period in 2008. Can we expect the crisis to enforce a hefty emasculation of the developed world? The very thought of it gives the term "crunch" all-new, tear-inducing connotations.