I presume this is tongue in cheek Hugh; either that or you need a better therapist. As I'm sure you know (or would know if you stopped to think), outside of totalitarian states, there has never been, nor will there ever be, a hierarchy of proper or improper subjects for poets.
As to poets who drive, there are too many to try to name. Driving is part of 20th/21st Century life, as your wife seems to understand. To pick two poets almost at random: Les Murray has a marvellous poem about the sense of liberation to be found in driving; and Heaney has written many poems out of the experience of driving. The following link is one of my favourites by Heaney:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~abardubh...a/poem023.html
And here's the first lines of Murray's 'Portrait of the Artist as a New World Driver':
"A car is also
a high-speed hermitage. Here
only the souls of policemen can get at you."
I would add that a car is also a stationary hermitage, though people may wonder what you're up to in there (see my poem on the Deep End: SANDYMOUNT).
Oh, and this might interest you:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...25/ai_19021753
[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited October 03, 2005).]