Odd phrase. One of my mates, one Richard Pierce no less, said it when we were teenagers and asserted it could be used as a chat up line.

Rich suggested using it like this: “Hello, darlin’. Would you like to come outside and smoke my Volvo?” Pleasing, yet I couldn’t figure out what he meant then and I still can’t now. Is it a euphemism? Or did he intend burning the engine out on a family car marketed for its safety features? Why not ‘smoke’ a Porsche? Far more exciting, no?

This all came back to mind this afternoon as I was following a big black Toyota Celica back from town and noticed these cars have a huge gaping exhaust pipe, twice the girth of the average exhaust. Naturally I connected the feeble old pick-up line about Volvos with the gaping orifice/shiny appendage combo on view ahead of me. I imagined someone taking the ‘smoke my Volvo’ line to mean that they put their lips around the exhaust and smoke the whole car like a pipe.

Welcome to my world.