I suspect, though, that from a number of your editors it elicited some self-satisfied chuckles: the inevitable end of a crazy idea.

 In fact, it wasn't only a very good idea, but an essential one, if cars are to have any role to play in a sustainable future.

 For the level of global motorisation to reach current North American and West European levels will mean a six-fold increase in the present number of motor vehicles on the world's roads. Yet our planet's life-supporting ecosystems are already groaning under the strain of the present 500 million.

 For my part, it is not the motor car that I will be sorry to see go, but our civilisation which it is threatening to take with it.