During the first half of this year, Chinese carmakers achieved a feat of hyper-production that sounds less like industrial manufacturing and more like a plague of locusts. In just six months, they unveiled 650 new models – an average of four brand-new cars every day. At the same time, on the other side of the Pacific, Elon Musk abandoned Tesla’s car assembly lines. He retooled the entire factory to mass-produce the Optimus humanoid robot.

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What on earth is happening to the world’s car industry? These two bizarre developments seem to signal the end of the global automotive industry as we know it. The age of spanner-wielding, oily-fingered car worker emerging from under a jacked-up rolling chassis appears to have been vaporised. The world’s motoring companies are now run by software engineers who treat the car as a large, rapidly depreciating smartphone on wheels. 

Back in the distant 20th century, buying a new car was a deliberate, tactile milestone. You spent weeks studying glossy brochures and motoring magazines, debating the merits of a 1.6-litre over a 2.0-litre, and haggling under plastic bunting with salesmen over the colour of velour upholstery. When you finally drove that Mondeo or Golf onto your drive, you did so........

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