If a nice young man wants to drive something really stylish with a naughty edge, he acquires an old Jaguar XJ6 for a couple of grand (or less if it needs work). With its gorgeous swooping lines and stately road presence, he recognises it as being a bit flash in a late-60s, early-70s sort of way. Although his brushes with the law probably amount to a parking fine or two, or a ticking-off from a policeman for stopping on a double yellow line by the cashpoint, when he cruises along with his radio turned up he can imagine that he has a bit of a shady past.

"Gangster chic" - in which completely law-abiding men can indulge in mobster fantasies - has become all the rage since Guy Ritchie's hugely successful Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. This inspired a rash of lame British gangster films such as Love, Honour and Obey, Honest, and the re-release of The Long Good Friday, as well as the much-panned small screen spin-off of Lock, Stock. The British mobster style has not only taken over the fashion pages of men's magazines - with crombies, well-cut shirts, sharp suits and silk socks - it has also spilled over on to the road, too.

Although the driver of an old Jag may well look like Arthur Daley or EastEnder Phil Mitchell (both XJ6 drivers) to the rest of the world, in his mind's eye it is more likely he is imagining himself as Michael Caine in Get Carter, or any of the 60s criminals in the excellent Gangster Number One, which has extra verisimilitude because of the input of special adviser Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery.

John Wetherhall, who runs a Jaguar restoration garage near Bristol, admits that some of his customers fall in love with the car because it has associations of diamond dealing or multiple night-club owning: "It is a perfectly harmless, though deeply risible game of celluloid British gangster nostalgia, although there are an awful lot of respectable classic Jag owners who simply love the aesthetic of the car. There is very little chance of this 'gangster fashion' kind of driver - who usually seems to work in the media - ever being mistaken for the real thing and pulled over as a suspect for the latest bank heist. If the truth be known, gangsters don't really drive Jags or Daimlers any more."

He's right. Today's gangster is much more likely to drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle) for his loathsome trade of drug-dealing, extortion and general racketeering. Although in the 80s, the gangsters of London, Manchester and Glasgow emulated the company cars of City boys by driving BMWs or Mercedes - giving the spoilt financial and services sector some welcome street cred - the 21st-century gangster seems to have more practical considerations on his mind.

Now Mitsubishi Shoguns, Range Rover Vogues and Discoveries are the cars of choice for the successful criminal. Just as well-heeled mothers like a four-wheel drive so they can protect their hordes of kids from the dangers of city traffic while showing off their wealth, status and procreative ambitions, so the gangster wants a rottweiler of the road to both intimidate and impress his rivals and victims.

Kenneth Noye - who was connected with the money-laundering of the Brinks Mat robbery, the murder of a policeman and was finally arrested for a road rage killing - was the proud owner of an L-reg Land Rover Discovery. In Brent, north London, last February, various SUVs were involved in a terrifying shoot-out in the car park of a leisure complex with hundreds of people caught inside. It all started because the girlfriends of rival criminal gangs got into an argument about parking places. It seems you need at lot of room for an SUV, which gives the driver a feeling of power and strength. You can look down on fellow drivers from patrician heights and feel distanced from the hoi polloi.

The difference in the vehicles driven by the wealthy mum and the gangland leader are in the all- important details. "Bobby", who used to be involved with a notorious north London gang, says: "The glass must be blacked out, the sound system powerful enough to permanently change the rhythm of your heartbeat, and the spare wheel cover has to come from a dealer in Park Lane or Knightsbridge - to show you have the money to go to the best places and pay up front and in full. Basically, it is like a very comfortable tank in a very dirty war: a real fuck-off set of wheels."

Although the SUV offers protection and security, gangsters - be they Yardies, East End boys or Triads - still like a flash car for the evening, or "non-work" assignations. And some people aspire to this gangster fashion. In the estate opposite my house, which is so full of drug dealers there are plans to pull it down, there is one man who owns a four-wheel drive and a BMW Z3 which, unlike my tatty old Peugeot 309, never seems to get vandalised or broken into.

It is obviously much more important for someone in such a world to display their success by the expense and quality of their wheels than to have a comfortable and salubrious home. Pat Goldman, a criminologist undertaking a study of British gangsters, says: "The whole point of being a criminal involved in drugs or prostitution is that it affords you status you otherwise would not have had. The gangster cares less about attracting the attention of the police who, if Jack Straw gets his way, may be given the power to seize cars which they believe to have been bought by ill-gotten gains, than gaining the respect and envy of the local villains."

Dave Courtney - the former gangster who describes himself as a reformed criminal, and who wrote Stop the Ride I Want to Get Off - now drives a white Rolls-Royce with a small England flag down the side: "You only get caught," he says, "if you are making mistakes and drawing attention to yourself."

This is certainly the case with the late playboy robber and gangster Valerio Viccei, who masterminded the Knightsbridge safety deposit job which at £62m is the biggest bank robbery Britain has ever known. The haul was so enormous that Viccei, also known as "the Wolf", filled his bath with banknotes and covered the floor of his flat in north London with jewels. He could have fled, having transferred much of his fortune to safety deposits around the world, but delayed his departure because he was waiting to get his beloved red Ferrari exported. He was arrested at his favourite London hotel, Whites, after his fingerprint was found on one of the safety deposit boxes, and still attempted to escape in his shiny car which he called "the love of his life".