A friend of mine has a vintage Jaguar — a beautiful, impractical thing that he loves the way some men love boats, which is to say expensively and idiotically. He talks about it a lot, and I nod and pretend to listen — I know next to nothing about cars, which is why I happily drive a Subaru. But as much as I love my Subaru — it’s a practical, reliable car, which cannot be said about my friend’s vintage Jaguar — I have to admit it’s missing something in the romantic pizazz department.

For instance, ashtrays. My friend’s vintage Jag has ashtrays aplenty. I counted: four of them. One in each door panel, plus two more in the center console up front, because apparently in 1971 the engineers at Jaguar looked at a car with seating for four and thought: What if they all light up at once? I found myself trying to imagine what the inside of that car must have been like at full burn. Four passengers, windows up against the English rain, everyone lighting up. The interior filling with the white smoke of, presumably, English cigarette brands with........

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