‘Probably the safest place to drive a car in Britain now is in the middle of a Scottish loch,’ is the arresting beginning of the Observer Magazine of 16 October 1966, a special issue to coincide with the Motor Show at Earl’s Court, London (‘Living with your car’).

This state of affairs was ‘a sad reflection on the crowded state of our roads, with their jams and their queues, their narrowness and their parking meters’ – newly arrived horrors clearly.

The chap on the cover once caught 24 trout in a day from the driver’s seat of his Amphicar Ropotamo II. I presume it travelled at 7.5mph rather than the 75mph stated. Unless that was how he’d managed to catch so many fish – by high-speed drag net.

They looked at ‘some of the ways in which drivers – men and women – enjoy their motoring off the beaten track’. One production-car trial involved driving a family car up a series of 36 muddy slopes in the hills above Llandudno. ‘Wives often come along and take over from their husbands with alternate stints at the wheel. Some even bring children – to add traction by bouncing up and down on the back seat.’ Note this wasn’t for the kids’ enjoyment; they were merely ballast.

Which brings us to ‘the brightest gleam in 1966’ which had been ‘the arrival on the scene of the word “safety” – really taken seriously for the first time by makers and motorists’. A feature on choosing seatbelts for children partly suggested it was only because they were so unruly – ‘since they adore clambering up and over seats at great hazard both to themselves and the driver, the only safe answer is for them to be strapped into the rear seat’.

Still, there was always a Merit toy steering-wheel and dashboard to keep them ‘pacified for hours’ – ‘it has a horn in the middle which works, but mercifully gives only a tiny toot’.