Today’s car is a Morris Minor ragtop from sometime in the 50s and 60s. The Morris Minor was a predecessor to the Mini, and if the live action movie of the Borrowers is to be believed, it was the only car that was available at that time.

The Borrowers wins the award for most gratuitous use of colour grading in a movie, with a colour palette seemingly based on the different kinds of mould you can find in a shower stall that has been left to rot for a few years. That’s definitely a British provincial high street you’re seeing there – so why are the cars driving on the wrong side of the road?

You can see lots of variants on the Minor in the picture above. There’s the wood framed Traveller, station wagon where the wood at the load-carrying end was actually structural rather than a stuck on decal. There’s a red GPO van, which at the end of their useful life you used to be able to buy for £10 at auctions – British indie bands couldn’t have survived without the ready supply of these in the 80s. And on the right, fourth one up, there’s a convertible.

We love convertibles in England. On those rare occasions that the sun does come out we tend to make the most of every fleeting moment of it, which is why we have more convertible cars per head than any other country in Europe. It’s the triumph of optimism over experience.

Note that I’ve drawn the car afresh in each panel – there’ll be none of that cut and paste stuff in my strip if I can possibly help it…