Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Be warned, though. So much of you is visible as you drive along that you need to think about what you’re wearing. I suggest a g-suit of some kind. Or, if you don’t have one, a black polo neck and some Jason King-style sunglasses.

I genuinely felt, as I set off for the first time, that this could be the perfect car. Olde worlde style with modern dynamics. A Georgian house with central heating.

Sadly, it was not to be. The problem is that if the new company changed every single feature, the end result would be classified as a new car, and would need to face all the modern safety and emissions tests. So some of the period features remain. The wipers, for instance, which move back and forth nicely. But remove not a single drop of moisture.

Then there’s the wind noise. The fact is that, back in the Seventies, cars had rain gutters and ‘that’ll do’ was the guiding principle of all West Midlands panel beaters. So at 70 mph on the motorway, even in the new car, it sounds like you’re wing-walking.

The biggest problem, though, is the steering. They’ve been forced to keep the original rack, and no matter how many adjustments you make to the geometry, you’re not going to get round the fact that it was designed by a man who wanted most of all to go on strike. As a result, it’s heavy, there’s little self-centring and it’s so low-geared you need a lot of arm-twirling just to move three degrees off the straight ahead.

Right. That’s the bad stuff out of the way. Now let’s get on to the good bits. Starting with the heater. Oh, the joy of being able to have warm feet and a cool face. Climate control is all very well but give me the simple Jensen setup any day.

And then there’s the sheer speed of the thing. Put your foot down and, with a lot of angry lion noises, the bonnet rears up and in 4.5 seconds you’re doing 60 mph. This comes as a big surprise to the following Audi driver, who’s desperately dealing with life in your jet wash, while not quite believing his eyes. Flat out, you could be doing 155 mph – or more. That’s 155 in a car made in 1975.

It gets better, because although the steering feels a bit Victorian, there’s no question that there’s plenty of bite in the bends and none of the understeer I was expecting. It’s not a sports car. But it gets close.

On top of all this, there’s the ride. We have become used in modern cars to the fat, low-profile tyres loved by stylists transmitting every single ripple and ridge directly to our bottoms. But in the Jensen, it’s like floating. It’s as comfortable as a modern-day Bentley.

But it costs less. Despite the sheer amount of work that’s gone into this car, it will cost you – including the donor vehicle – from just £107,000.

So, to conclude. What we have here is one of the most beautiful cars ever made, stripped down to the bare metal, repainted, retrimmed and fitted with just enough mechanical components to make it handle properly, ride even better and go like a bastard. That’s a properly good idea.

Best of all, though, for the first time you can say, ‘I’ll pick you up at eight. I’ll be in the Interceptor.’ And you’ll actually be there on time.

In the olden days most people who needed a family car bought a simple hatchback. A Ford Escort, perhaps, or, if they were feeling racy, a Volkswagen Golf. Not any more. Now, ordinary won’t do. Simple is dreary. The Hush Puppy has been ousted to make way for the clown shoe: the SUV. The crossover. The funky little retro bomb with scorpions on the bonnet and chequerboard door mirrors.

I wonder why. When I finish work today I shall potter over to the house and pour myself a glass of Château Léoube, the pink sort. It’s what I drink before supper. And during supper. And afterwards as well, usually. Wine is simple. It’s easy. And a bottle contains exactly the right amount for a single evening.

Beer is good, too. The Ford Escort of beverages. On a really hot day, when you’ve been busy outside, you don’t think, Oooh. What I really need now to quench my thirst is a banana daiquiri. You always want a beer: not the sort James May likes, with twigs in it, but a Peroni, in a glass with condensation dripping down the outside.

One of the things I hate most in life is when people come round to my house and ask for a gin and tonic. That’s four ingredients I must go and find. The gin, the tonic, the ice and the lemon. We never have a lemon in the house: why would you? And if we do, invariably it was picked before the Boer war and has the texture and juiciness of a marble.

And then there’s the ice tray, which either contains no ice at all, or it does but it’s one big lump that will not, even with the assistance of a hammer, come out of the container. To get round this we recently installed a fridge that dispenses ice at the touch of a button. In theory this is brilliant, but what happens in fact is that you hold the glass under the nozzle and you get water instead. So you start again, and now it delivers enough ice to keep a Spanish trawler at sea for several months.

The first time this happened I attempted to clear up the mess with a vacuum cleaner, and now I have a message for you all: do not do this. Because Henry burped a bit and then broke.

Seriously, going to someone’s house and asking for a gin and tonic is like asking for a shepherd’s pie. And you wouldn’t do that because you know it’d be a nuisance. Especially if your wife has asked for a vodka and cranberry juice, with just a hint of lime. We don’t have any cranberry juice, or lime. Or vodka usually. Because the kids’ friends have drunk it all.

It’s always best, for convenience, then, to keep your drinking preferences simple. Yes, on a lazy Sunday morning it’s possible to spend an hour or so making a super-complicated Bloody Mary, but, no, in a packed City pub it is not acceptable to shout from the back, ‘Four Pimm’s, please, with all the trimmings.’

And now, in a link so tenuous a spider would call it flimsy, we shall move on to the modern-day equivalent of a pint of stout. The new Ford Focus. The car you didn’t buy because you fancied a Fiat Harvey Wallbanger or a Citroën Shirley Temple instead.

Ten years ago I bought a Ford Focus, and I still have it today. Occasionally I use it, and I am always amazed by what a joyous thing it is to drive. Thanks to independent rear suspension, an expensive solution to a problem no one in the world has ever noticed, it is an attack dog in the corners. The engine’s good, too. And, as we know, it can carry just as many people and dogs as a big 4x4. More, in fact, because our ancient labrador can no longer leap up into the Range Rover, whereas she can get into the back of the Ford.

The best thing about the Focus, though, is the amount of times it’s broken down. Have a guess. No. Because in ten years it hasn’t gone wrong once. Every single thing still works. It’s a five-star car, that.

But what of the new model? Well, there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a looker. With its black-painted sills, it appears sleek and slinky, more like a coupé than a family hatchback.

Inside, it’s a button-fest. There are millions of them on every flat surface; so many, in fact, that it takes several hours to find the one that starts the engine. I don’t mind this, especially as they are laid out in the same pattern that Porsche uses on the Panamera, and anyway they are necessary because this car has a lot of features.

Even the base models come with blue teeth and voice activation for the main controls. This doesn’t ever work, of course – like the iPod connector – but there are hours of fun to be had on long journeys asking the dashboard to do one thing and then wondering what it will do instead.