The 23 March 1969 edition of the Observer Magazine was a special spring motoring issue ‘about men and women and their loves and hates for cars’. A nerdy appraisal of family estates is clearly written before the advent of rear-windscreen wipers: ‘The dirty rear window is endemic in estate cars… in bad weather, one may need to stop every 30 miles to wipe it clear.’

There are illustrations and comments on the Hillman Husky, Citroën Safari and Austin Countryman, immortalised in Fawlty Towers when John Cleese gives his recalcitrant machine a ‘damn good thrashing’. It says it has a ‘surprising capacity for its size and excellent roadholding,’ but there’s nothing about its reliability.

Then it all goes a bit JG Ballard with ‘Just what is it about pretty girls in fast cars?’ Psychoanalyst Isabel Menzies says: ‘A car is a sexual symbol. The body is the womb and the mother. The engine is the phallic symbol… Some girls who drive fast cars have tremendous sexual problems and penis envy. They may come from unhappy homes and have difficulty establishing stable relations with the opposite sex.’

Jean Denton – ‘top woman racing driver and a stunning enough blonde to arrest anyone’s attention at the wheel of her MGB’ – notes the difference between reactions to her driving and her husband’s. ‘I seem to arouse a competitive spirit among men drivers. I notice that especially at traffic lights, roundabouts and in overtaking. Men seem to resent me.’

Cars and reason don’t seem to go together. There’s an interview with a disqualified driver who has never bothered to take his test because ‘driving is more sense than anything else’. He got a five-year suspended sentence for driving with no tax, no insurance, no licence and no test certificate. Oh, and he was drunk, too.