am going to take a sharp, glittering axe to our national roots of shame and humility. I am going to say that there was a period, a surprisingly recent one, when British car design was the best in the world. Not just that it was ‘good’ in that vexatiously indefinable way the tired old term ‘good design’ suggests, but that Britain made cars positioned on the positive side of idiosyncratic. Not just loony experiments, but authentically creative. And the best test of any culture’s vitality
