Richard the Lionheart (we hope)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. After two years of being the proud custodian of a little blue Land Rover fondly known as Blue Tit, the time has come to expand the family and buy another vehicle.

Blue Tit has covered a sometimes unwilling but mostly cooperative 40,000 miles with me at the wheel, only occasionally – okay, not that occasionally – leaving both of us steaming at the side of the road. Then again, I’ve dragged this poor, not-quite-classic Landie that was designed for working the land along more motorways, around more roundabouts and over more borders than any number of modern tin boxes created for precisely such purposes.

It’s true that my destination on any given trip has too often been determined by whichever mechanical issue is in most urgent need of fixing but, credit where it is due, the 2.5-litre engine (which, now tuned, chucks out a prodigious 67bhp) has performed above and beyond, time and time again.