Even now, this is a car with the power to startle. Not through horsepower – unless it’s a V8 on a wet roundabout – but with its looks. I’m still fascinated by the abrupt chop of that turret-like roof, the hunched mass of its high-decked boot, the ribbed air vents decorating its strangely-shaped ‘D’ pillars and the surprising discovery that the rear wheels lie almost directly below it, creating a wheelbase that seems too short.

Which it was if you hit a bump mid-bend on a wet day, an intrusion that could reverse your direction of travel faster than a snowboard spill, as I found to my embarrassment on a damp roundabout 35 years ago.