I SPENT 24 hours last week in a car older than some of the people who’ll read this column, and it rearranged something in my head that I’m still trying to put back together.

The car was a Mercedes-Benz 500E, built in 1992 by Porsche of all companies, in one of the stranger arrangements in car manufacturing history. Mercedes needed a V8 flagship and couldn’t fit the wider bodywork down its own production line, so it sent the job to its supposed rival across town in Zuffenhausen. The result is a big, quiet, understated saloon that looks like nothing much until you start it.

I’d expected the performance to be the thing that got me. It wasn’t. What got me was everything else.

There is no screen in this car. Not one. The centre console has three chrome-rimmed dials, one for fan speed, one for airflow direction, and between them a little cluster of buttons for the air conditioning, recirculation and rear screen heater.

Turn a dial, and you can feel exactly where it’s set without taking your eyes off the road.

Below that sits a Becker Mexico 2000, a cassette radio with proper numbered preset buttons and a tiny amber display, the kind of unit that made you feel like you’d achieved something just by finding a station. No menus. No sub-menus. No voice assistant misunderstanding you and setting the interior........

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