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I’m not quite sure at what point I fell out of love with the motor show.

It could have been some time in the late ‘70s when my dad stopped building exhibition stands for the event and I no longer got in for free. Then maybe it was the middle ‘80s when I was pressed into service at the London International Show at Earls Court and made to hang around on the BMW stand and bother innocent show goers.

I spent more time chatting up the hired totty, especially one girl who looked like Sheena Easton. Strange that I can remember her in perfect detail but I couldn’t tell you anything about the cars.

It would be fair to say that, after a while in this job, you approach different new cars with different expectations.

And it would also be fair to say that I approached the Renault Koleos, newly arrived on these shores, with my expectations flying somewhere below ankle height.

I mean, just look at the thing: with its teetering stance, grafted-on corporate front end and full complement of soft-roader design cliches. It even boasts an inclinometer – the sort of pointless detail that I remember from the 1980s Fiat Panda 4x4.

It might not sound as thrilling as tearing around a circuit in a brand new sports car, but there really are few things more enthralling in a motoring journo’s life than visiting a car factory.

The cutting-edge technology, the sophisticated processes, the thoroughness and coordination of the work, and the sheer attention-to-detail involved with screwing cars together will simply blow your mind.

Ford’s Dagenham diesel centre, which knocks out close to a million engines a year for the Blue Oval’s many and various models, is just such a place. Ford of Britain opened up this engine factory to a few of us yesterday, in advance of the London motor show next week, where it will be ramming home its improving environmental credentials.

On a trip to the Scottish Borders a couple of weeks ago, to test the revitalised and much improved Lotus Europa, I had dinner with an old friend, Ian Scott-Watson.

You might not have heard of him, but he was the bloke who gave the great Scottish champion, Jim Clark, both cars to drive and crucial encouragement in his first few years. There’s a tale about Scott-Watson, a perfectly decent driver, practising for a sprint in his DKW, then handing it to Clark to have a go as an afterthought. Clark was so quick that the stewards felt they had to ‘have a word’ to Scott-Watson about sandbagging...

As our manufacturing industry disappears down the throne, inflation rises, credit crunches and our leaders gaze like stunned rabbits into the headlights of approaching recession, there is at least some crumb of comfort that can be derived from knowing there are still some things we do better than anywhere else.

There is no tennis tournament like Wimbledon, no cricketing venue like Lords and no motoring event anywhere in the world quite like the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

If you wait for long enough a press release will arrive to tell you  just about everything.

Take this morning’s announcement from BCA auctions that it will shortly be flogging off a Jaguar XJ saloon that’s currently the property of actor Herbert Lom.