Since recently purchasing a pint-size jalopy, I started to notice a strange and unnerving phenomenon. Small car bias. I’m here to tell you, driver discrimination against miniature motor vehicles is real.

I openly confess my mechanical knowledge is crap. The most I could tell you about our new wheels is there is the number two in the title. Given the low number stamped on the back of the car, you are right in guessing it comes up to the door handle of most giant jalopies.

Before getting our mini motor there was some sincere chatter about it being more environmentally-friendly and that we could always hire a bigger one if we ever wanted to go to dinner as a family.

My relationship with cars is uncomplicated. I hate them. I was never someone that chased the instant and lavish gratification that goes with getting a new one.

My first ever car was a 1957 HK Holden, which broke down about 500 meters from where I bought it. I walked back to the guy’s house who sold it to me, but he mentioned something about Pit Bulls and possibly removing some of my teeth.

I looked like the lead sing of Spandau Ballet and the guy could sense I was about to start sprinting down the street in my shiny loafers screaming, ‘help’

Since the Holden, I got by on cheap cars bought off people planning to move overseas or over east or the odd person in witness protection.

I can honestly say I’ve never personally owned an SUV or 4WD. Why have I mentioned these types of vehicles? Because all the pent-up proclivity targeted at the vehicular challenged is from SUV and 4WD owners.

I wanted to put my newly found, small car bias to the test, so I headed towards the intersection at the end of my street which is like some spiritual T-junction nirvana. Vehicles of all makes and models will gleefully let you in and even give you the follow-up wave.

The other day I gave a driver in a chunky 4WD a Wiggles-like wave, already pre-thanking him for letting me into the flowing traffic when he sped up. His two-tonne, beast rattled forward, snarling smoke and the guttural sounds of spooked elephants.

He even scowled at me in the rearview like I was a runt of the litter and I should know my place. I told myself not to read too much into it. I’ve annoyed a lot of people in my time, so it simply could be that.

The next day I was indicating the length of Canning Highway trying to get into the right line, but anytime I found the tiniest of openings a 4WD would magically appear.

I was positive the buggers were having all small cars tracked.

In a surprising moment of rationality, I kidded myself I was just experiencing that frequency illusion called Baader-Meinhof. That strange anomaly where you see hipster’s around Fremantle wearing pants halfway up their ankles and no socks, and then you see hundreds of them.

And there has been the odd occasion when children have whispered to their mothers, “is that Hagrid driving that teensy car, mummy”? So it could be that?

Baader-Meinhof was coined by the professor of linguistics at Stanford University, Arnold Zwicky. It turns out years later Zwicky suffered from the Dunning–Kruger effect – the cognitive bias whereby people overestimate their ability to spot things.

So maybe I’ve just been spotting more 4WDs and SUVs?

According to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, more than 50 per cent of cars on Australian roads are SUVs. (Let’s be honest I’ve never seen a 4WD in Perth with dirt on it.) That is a staggering amount of cars, but surely not all of them want to ram me off the road?

In 2005, the Australian Institute put out a paper (I shit you not) claiming city drivers of large 4WDs are “morally more conservative and less community orientated than other drivers.” “They are more likely to dislike homosexuals, have less regard for Indigenous culture and are less sympathetic to public and charitable support for disadvantaged people.”

Given it was published around 17 years ago, I don’t think it’s a fair representation of all 4WD owners today. I have seen many drivers throw coins at homeless people for washing their windscreens at traffic lights.

The most sacred territory for large terrain vehicles is the school drop-off. It’s their natural habitat. You will see them slumped in the middle of the road, in front of people’s driveways and parked on top of midget mobiles. Navigating these colossal carriers in a miniature mobile is like facing the German Panzer Tank division in a tricycle.

But it’s not just the owners of beefed-up buggies who are prejudiced against us ‘smallies’. Pedestrians have cultivated their own form of intolerance.

Walkers will happily stroll in front of my car, confident that any collision would result in only a minor inconvenience for them and certain death for me.

A young woman in a carpark just stepped off a kerb and stopped in front of me as I was eyeing off a small car bay. She looked the vehicle up and down as if waiting for clowns to burst out the back doors and boot.

But surely there would be some automobile affinity between the brothers and sisters in bite-size buggies?

The first time I pulled alongside another compact machine I expected the person to stare at me like an animal realising it was not the last of its species.

It was clear the driver behind the wheel of the car had been “bullied” by 4 bangers for years, because he peered straight ahead, trapped in his daily, depressed torpor.

I looked for signs of life. Some gesture. A knowing nod and maybe “hey, cool car.”

But no one who owns a petite ride will ever hear someone say, “hey, cool car.

He gently drove away as if Lucifer himself was holding onto his testicles.

But some drivers in pocket-sized vehicles are invisible to the small car bias. Older drivers in jalopies that were popular when Robert Menzies was PM. And young drivers in new, swanky, bright-coloured compacts, which colour-blind 4WD owners mistake for Mr Whippy vans.

There is something admirable about the spirit and vigour of folk that drive monstrous motor cars to the local bottle shop and back.

Just the next time you see a small, white jalopy with a number two on it somewhere, indicating the distance of Conrad Straight at Bathurst to get into another line, maybe just ease up the pedal. I promise no one will notice.