Five years ago my wife and I bought a car from a dealership in Exeter, after our previous one, with its long history of troubles, broke down there. When the salesman asked what we were looking for, we told him we had just one requirement: we must be able to leave our old car on his forecourt, and never see it again.
We’d never owned a new car before, and it was thrilling: everything in it worked. Then a month later I ran over a nail and got a flat tyre. I opened the boot, and peered into the compartment where the spare ought to have been. There, in the tyre-shaped well, I found only an electric pump and a can of repair gloop.
