EMMISSIONS/Killian Doyle: We all know the Italians' reputation for being great lovers, but a little known fact is that many of these Lotharios are forced to conduct their trysts in the backs of cars, due to the fact 90 per cent of them live with their parents until they're 30.
With this in mind, the northern town of Vinci, birthplace of one of mankind's greatest geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, has come up with a novel idea of a Love Car Park where star-crossed lovers can tootle along for sexual liaisons in peace.
I'm aware that auto-erotica means something else entirely different - onanism is hardly suitable material for The Irish Times, even in this depraved corner of said organ - but the pun is just begging to be mentioned, isn't it? As for the Car-ma Sutra, that's just too cringeworthy for even me to mention.
But, as Motors reported last week, Vinci's Mayor Giancarlo Faenzi said: "We're just recognising that young people love each other." Ain't that cute.
They're are going to a lot of trouble, by all accounts - high hedges, soft lighting, bins for used prophylactics, possibly even a condom machine.
Handily for them, under Italian law, sex in cars is not illegal as long as the windows are covered up. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has himself sung the praises of in-car entertainment. "Many of us first kissed a girl in a Fiat 500," he once said.
I don't even want to think about Bertie engaging in teenage fumblings with the grey bras of sweaty girls from Drumcondra.
But it's not all fun and frolics for the fornicators in Italy. An 85-year-old man and his 74-year-old lady friend were caught having sex in a car park beside a school recently. Rather than being awarded medals and the freedom of the city, as they should have been, they were each given two-month suspended sentences. In fairness, what's the point in being 85 if you can't get up to mischief? When I'm that age I fully intend to be engaging in as much backseat driving as my body will put up with.
Vehicular Valentinos should be warned, however, that their lustful pursuits are not without their hazards. Notwithstanding the fate of Italy's passionate pensioners, there's all manner of buttons and handles and gear sticks that can get in the way.
A friend had a particularly nasty experience involving an illicit tryst. Without wishing to give too much away, the lustful pair were snogging away in his mother's car by a lake in Co Wicklow, got carried away, banged off the handbrake accidentally and found themselves up to their knees in freezing cold water.
Our hero had to rouse a local farmer from his 3 am sleep in order for him to drag the car out with a tractor, then drive home in terror, trying to come up with a plausible excuse with which to appease his mother. Her finding a pair of knickers in the glove compartment the next morning before he even woke up really didn't help matters.
So, is there any chance of such a Love Car park in Ireland? Sadly, I suspect that if - by some mind-bogglingly unlikely sense of good humour by the Irish authorities - a lover's car park was established here, it would soon descend into utter booze-fuelled depravity, with fights, car thefts and blackmail rampant within weeks.
And you just know some clown would set up a Hiace in the corner, a soiled mattress stuffed in the back, renting it out by the half-hour to desperate couples who can't afford a car. Ugh.
A final word to all intending to engage in motorised mooching: Always practice safe sex. Wear a seatbelt.