A FEW WEEKS ago, I wrote about the joy of driving a classic Mercedes-Benz 500E and it got me thinking.

What cars from today will have the same meaning to us in the future? At the cars and coffee meets of 2056, what will middle-aged men like me be rolling up in?

Cars of the 1990s were built, at times, without much in the way of filters.

Emission rules were a nice-to-have, and safety tech was only starting to catch on. Cars had airbags and felt solid, but nothing was watching your eyes to see if you were drowsy.

Those features are mandatory now, in part as an antidote to our addiction to our phones, and we are a far more distracted generation of drivers than any that came before us.

The classic car market is booming, and you have to admire anyone with the foresight to hold onto a car that meant something to them.

I wasn’t so clever. About 20 years ago, after a few glasses of wine and browsing the internet for cars, which is something I do about 20% of any given day, I found a 1991 BMW 318iS in Luton.

The E30 was the much-loved 3-Series of the 1980s and 90s, built in big numbers but, by the early 2000s, easily picked up for very little money. Mine was one of them.

I hopped on a cheap Ryanair flight and met the owner of Old Colonel Cars. He took £2,000 off me for a low-mileage, rust-free Lazer Blue car........

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