If you are a television detective, then it makes sense to have a classic car of some sort because you never actually need to drive it anywhere. A production team runner does that, and then you simply drop into the driving seat to pull up stylishly outside the murderer's house.
If you were a real detective, your chief constable would want a word in your ear if you insisted on using a MkII Jaguar or a Triumph with running boards. "Look, Bergerorse. This is the third murder on the trot where you failed to catch the baddie because your car broke down. Now stop being so stupid and use one of the Astra diesels like everyone else."
While doing the school run this morning, I saw a chap in a mustard yellow Volvo P1800. Presumably, he was on his way to work. Definitely, he wouldn't get there.
All of the things you take for granted in your Renault or your Ford - brakes that slow the car down, heating that works, electric windows, power steering - none of it is fitted to the Volvo. Plus, you know what happens when a cliff has been exposed to the wind for long enough. So can you imagine what a piston will be like after it's spent 25 years headbutting a hundred billion explosions. It'll be like a pebble.
This means there will be no compression, which means you will have a top speed of one. You'd go faster if you got out and pushed. And you'll be doing that a lot with your Volvo because the alternator won't work.
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The only good news about this is that by modern standards the P1800 is extremely light. And that's because it has virtually no safety features. A point that will become blindingly obvious should you ever reach two and hit a tree.
Classic cars are all rubbish. My Mercedes Grosser is rubbish. The Ferrari 250 GTO is rubbish. Even a Lancia Stratos is rubbish. They are typewriters in a computerised world. So why would anyone choose to buy such a thing?
Simple. Anyone who has a classic car hates his wife.
Our friend in the Volvo P1800 is almost certainly a branch secretary of the owners' club. He will have written to his old school magazine about the appointment and he will spend many hours at night trawling the internet for interesting Volvo titbits. This means he doesn't have to sit anywhere near his wife of an evening.
When the club meets, he gets to go away for a whole weekend. With a bit of luck, he will break down on the way home and be forced to spend the night in a Travelodge. And that's excellent too because it means he doesn't have to sleep with her either.
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Furthermore, by driving a 1972 mustard yellow car, he will be seen by other road users as someone a bit unusual. Perhaps someone who writes poetry for a living or is Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs. Consequently, women will give him their telephone numbers at the traffic lights. Or stop to help when he is sitting at the side of the road, exhausted from all the pushing, and looking a bit like Mr Darcy as a result.
Well that's what he thinks. But, of course, being a classic car enthusiast, he will be wearing shoes like Cornish pasties and Rohan trousers and he will have trouble with his adenoids. Which means he won't look like Mr Darcy. He'll look like Man at Millets. And as a result no women will give him their numbers and soon he will stop typing "volvo" into his search engine at night and start typing "vulva" instead.
This is the sad truth. Show me a man with a classic car, and I'll show you a hard drive that the police would confiscate in a heartbeat.
The trouble is that all of us quite like the idea of owning a classic. We fancy the idea of having something unusual in our lives. We just don't want to be tarred with the Millets brush and we don't want to break down every morning.
That's why I like the idea of limited edition modern cars. They used to be ten a penny, especially when dealers would add some stripes, paint the door mirrors pink and call the end result - which came with a £1,000 premium - the "Carnival".
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Driving a car like this makes you all gooey because you know you won't see another; but unlike a classic, it won't arrive everywhere on the back of a lorry and you won't feel compelled to join an owners' club.
I wonder sometimes why car makers don't do more limited specials. The Prius "Berk", with bark doors and seats made from moss. The Audi "Cheshire", with clamshell leatherette upholstery and an onyx gearknob. The GM "Bust", which has no bodywork at all.
In the days of homologation, any manufacturer wishing to enter rallying or saloon-car racing would be forced by the rules to sell a small but finite number of that car to the public. As a result we got the Mitsubishi Evo, the Lancia Delta Integrale and the Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500.
Even the Golf GTI was intended to be a limited edition car when it first came out. But these days? Er ... Renault occasionally fits a hatchback with polythene windows and sells it as a special but that's about it. Which means that if you want something different, you are forced into the steamy bri-nylon world of old Volvo P1800s.
And that brings us on to a small batch of Minis that were made to commemorate the car's 50th birthday.
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I can't see that there was much to celebrate, frankly. Yes, it was a brilliant little car back in 1959 but it should have been updated in 1964. And because it wasn't, because they were still making the same damn thing - usually at a loss, in a factory with a picket line - into the 21st century, the company was eventually bought by BMW who brought out a new car, which, because it had almost the same wheelbase as a Land Rover Discovery, was about as much of a mini as Julie Andrews's nun frock.
No matter, they've now launched some limited run specials ...
There is the Mini 50 Mayfair, which, I presume, comes with gold teeth, a dishdasha and, instead of a radiator grille, a nice beard. There's the Mini 50 Camden, which runs on grass and only goes left, and there's the John Cooper Works World Championship 50, which has some stripes.
I haven't driven any of those. What I've done is driven the Mini Cooper S Convertible, which is now available with the same turbocharged 1.6-litre engine that you get in a Peugeot 207 GTi and soon, the Ford Fiesta.
It's a fine engine that produces not many carbon dioxides, absolutely no turbo lag at all, unusually, and 172bhp. It doesn't feel like that much. It certainly doesn't zing.
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And then there's the hood. When it's up, you can detect a bit of wobble, but when it's down, so the front and the back are only connected by the floor, there's only one way to describe the feel. It's floppy.
Other problems? Well, visibility when the roof is up is woeful. It's like sitting in a postbox. The only people who can get in the back are those who have stepped on a bomb and the boot is miserable.
And yet, despite all this, it remains a great little car to own. Because the style - and there's tons of it - buries the substance, it doesn't feel, or look, like anything else on the road. You therefore get to stand out without actually being in a lay-by trying to make a fan belt from plaits of pubic hair. The only trouble is that the new Cooper S rag top costs £19,000. The car I tested with something called the Chili pack was £21,205. And I'm sorry but if all you want to do is stand out while driving something new, it'd be impossible to ignore - or resist - the £13,605 Fiat 500 Abarth.
The Clarksometer
Mini Cooper S Convertible
Engine 1598cc, four cylinders
Power 172bhp @ 5500rpm
Torque 177 lb ft @ 1600rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel 44.1mpg (combined)
CO2 153g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 7.4sec
Top speed 138mph
Price £19,000
Road tax band G (£150 a year)
Clarkson's verdict
Full of style but it comes at a price