The late summer vintage car gathering in Fornoli, combined with a crafts market, is one event that I truly look forward to. It’s now in its second year.

There is nostalgia for a time when traffic jams were occasional, when children could sit between their parents on one continuous front seat, when seat belts were unknown, when the AA man on his motorcycle and sidecar saluted you as you drove past him, when gears were changed in the steering column, when dickey seats opened up out the rear boot….ah I could go on.

One car at the event which sums up quite a few of these images was the Triumph Roadster 1800 dating from 1946 and appearing  in the TV series ‘Bergerac’. Designed for the US market, (hence its name – a roadster is what Americans call a two-seater sports car) the car, a remodelling of the firm’s pre-war Dolomite, has a largely aluminium body because of post-war steel shortages and is the last to feature dickey seats. Performance isn’t exactly its best feature (it can barely touch 80 mph) but its appearance remains quite impressive. Only around two thousand came off the assembly lines and Italy has three of them.

Here is a selection of other vintage vehicles at Fornoli last Sunday for lovers of older cars to spot. Note the Citroen DS (pronounced Deese i.e. Goddess in French) with its pioneering hydropneumatic suspension, disc brakes and futuristic looks, the Alfas, the Fiat 1100s, 600s and 500s (we still miss ours, crunched up in 2017), the MGs, the Jaguar, Jeep and other delightful and elegant specimens when cars were still being designed and assembled by humans rather than computers.

At the end of the morning the stirring rumble of vintage engines filled the air as the procession of cars set off for their proud owners’ lunch. What devotion has gone into making these cars look still wonderfully young while we….