‘Our’ car to be precise. Well okay, not technically ‘ours’, but OY08 ZYF, the Polo BlueMotion we had for 10 days in August, around a week earlier than the boys at Top Gear had it. If you missed Sunday’s programme, the three presenters did an economy run from Basel in Switzerland to Blackpool, where they were due to turn on the famous lights.

Only allowed one tank of fuel for the trip, Jeremy Clarkson and James May chose big-capacity diesels from Jaguar and Subaru respectively, while Richard Hammond flew the VW flag, and chose the economical Polo. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to be the exact same car we had driven around the Yorkshire Dales, and had cleaned almost every day for pictures.

Did it win the challenge? But of course, but not by as large a margin as you may think. It was nice to see the Polo being promoted in a prime time slot, though, but strange to think that we had sat where the short one had spent a day driving across Europe, striking a balance between trying to get the most miles from a tank of diesel, but also driving fast enough to win the race.