Porsche

Remember ashtrays in cars? Soon cars will themselves become objects of wet-eyed nostalgic reverie. A thrilling era of propelling ourselves, while gassing others, via a series of explosions more or less constrained by gears, steering devices and friction materials, is coming to an end. Enjoy that very loud Porsche while you can. It will soon be illegal. The great fascination of the car resides not in engineering or technology but in semantics and emotions. A friend has a disgraceful anecdote from his untidy youth to explain the grip cold metal has on hot hearts. A brief fling with a married woman whose husband travelled a lot found him one cold morning, late for a lecture, with a ratty old Citroen that would not start. She cheerfully said: ‘Take his Jaguar.