During the summer my daughter bought her first car. Ford Ka. Light green metallic paintwork, alloy wheels. Very nice, very chic, very Hazel. Her sheer joy reminded me of my own when I collected my first car. It did not come out of a showroom and the 'finance' was £25 handed over in the back room of Clark's Bar in Edinburgh. I became the owner of a 1954 Vauxhall Wyvern with bald tyres, copious rust and a tendency to shed bits of itself all over the road. I was every bit as chuffed as Hazel with her two year old Ka. I, too, once had a passion for cars and often, nowadays, I wonder whatever happened to it. Certainly it has gone. Modern cars are so boring.

Sir Robin Day famously described Terry Wogan as 'the bland leading the bland'. How snugly that phrase slips onto the shoulders of modern car designers, all of whom seem hell bent on designing the same car. Technically, of course, today's cars are superior to anything that has gone before. Power steering, central locking, ABS and a host of electronic wizardry that make the Star Ship Enterprise look like Stephenson's Rocket. All very laudable but…

When I first knelt at the alter of the environmental Lucifer many cars still had running boards and huge, cone shaped headlamps. Heaters were an optional extra and windscreens were washed by the spray from the vehicle in front. But the cars were interesting; they had character and individuality. When you opened a door, you smelled real leather. Plastic was a pollutant still in its infancy. You did not wonder whether you were looking at a Singer or a Morris. You instantly knew, even if you were only seven or eight years old…which, incidentally, I was at that time!

So, while I am bored stiff with the modern car, I retain great affection for its ancestors. When Heartbeat is on TV I regularly find myself in trouble; 'Dad, will you shut up about the old cars! We're trying to follow the story!'
I passed my driving test in an eggshell-blue Triumph Herald and thought it was perfection on wheels. I still love them. My father owned a Morris Minor Traveller. I still love them. I loved the Vauxhall Wyvern which cost me £25. I loved its bench seat in the front and its three speed column gear change. Its interior smelled, I remember, of real leather…..and of dampness. It had its foibles and eccentricities but when you are in love you make allowances. My next car was a 1956 100E Ford Anglia. I was in love again. And oh how I missed that bench seat in the Vauxhall!

Nostalgia. According to the dictionary, 'a sentimental longing for the past.' In reality; selective memory. I remember my pride in these cars, my joy in driving them and I remember the girl friends associated with them (not that many, actually. I was no Robbie Williams) and therefore I associate them with pleasure and fun. Selective memory deletes scenes of freezing winter mornings when, after coughing and spluttering for fifteen minutes, the car stuck two fingers in the air and sent me to the bus stop. Cars in these days were very much fair-weather-friends and if the weather wasn't fair, neither was the car.

Nostalgia. The Triumph Herald in which I passed my test was started by the ignition key. You did not have to pull or push a starter button. I was amazed.

There are rare exceptions to my antipathy for modern cars, however. The new Mini is one. A thoroughly modern car which manages, nevertheless, to take a very subtle backward glance. Evolution has rendered it larger, sleeker and fitter than its ancestors and has honed it to cope with the savagery of modern motoring. Thankfully, though, evolution has not robbed it entirely of the old Mini's cheek and impudence, its sparkling sense of fun, its insistence on not being taken too seriously. I love it.

Those of you who are much younger than I, may see a day when you will lament to whoever will listen; 'I remember…long before all this "beam me up, Scottie" nonsense…when you actually had to drive yourself places.'
'Are you talking about the motor car?' a wide eyed youngster will ask.
'Yes,' you will say.
'Geez!' will come the astonished response, 'I never thought you were that old.'

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