Looking for all the world like the love-child of Lady Penelope’s FAB 1, a squashed Rolls-Royce Camargue and a wedge of Wensleydale, this extraordinary vehicle oozes weirdness, wackiness and whimsy from every gilded pore of its unfeasibly long body.

Your author ventured forth in it on some roads local to our HQ and was left in no doubt by the startled expressions of passers-by that this car still has the wherewithal to turn heads and summon profanities some 45 years after it first left Newport Pagnell.

People who sensed it coming turned their heads and silently mouthed, “What the *@$! is that?” before walking into a telegraph pole.

Those who heard the mighty 5.3-litre V8 roaring and snorting only at the last moment dived headlong into the nearest hedge while making the sign of the cross and fervently repenting their sins.

Mercy.

It really is quite a thing.

It works, too.

It has all the lazy grunt and easy urge you’d expect of Tadek Marek’s V8 masterpiece and it wafts along on a s...