EU’S nanny at the wheel will force me back to the future

It was inevitable, really. More than a century’s worth of engineering, tinkering, welding, tuning and dreaming has been cast by the wayside like a burger wrapper thrown on to the hard shoulder of the M6.

That’s thanks to an EU ruling that all new cars could soon be fitted with special devices to make them stick to the speed limit.

You will be able to override it, at least at first. A sharp jab of the accelerator will let you exceed legal limits, but such a move will be recorded in your car’s “black box” and shared with the police, insurers, and probably any teenager with a laptop and a few hours to spare.

With such automated “traffic police” installed in all cars, you might fear that the days of free motoring are numbered. Granted, I can (sort of) see where the EU is coming from. There are 25,000 deaths on Europe’s roads annually, mostly caused by human error. But this apparent solution still feels like a censorious intrusion into a very personal activity, once a byword for independence.

It implies that we can’t be trusted and are only in the driving seat until autonomous vehicles reign and manufacturers can, literally and metaphorically, take the wheel. And it is part of a trend. Travelling by car is now seen as outmoded and indulgent. Even the word “driving” is being phased out in favour of talk of “mobility solutions” and “mass transit development”.

But it needn’t be the end of the joie de vivre of the open road. And I won’t be putting up with it. I could, I suppose, choose my next ride from recent models, given that second-hand cars will be exempt from the dystopian new rules. But that wouldn’t be enough of a middle finger to the harmonisers of Brussels. No, if I can’t have new, my next car will be a classic.

As a petrol-head, I would certainly take a Mexico over a Megane. For all their idiosyncrasies, old cars provide endless pleasure and fascination. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Iain Duncan Smith, a man not overly enamoured by EU diktat, rolled into Chequers last weekend in a Morgan with the top down, looking very happy indeed.

The put-put-put of an MG as you dash through country lanes with nowhere in particular to be is a joy drivers should experience before blindly championing the soulless machines that threaten to become the norm. Then there’s the satisfyingly heavy “clunk” that older cars make as you close the door, the smell of carpeted footwells, and the delicate indicator noises – a “chip chip” rather than the modern clicking. I don’t mind a wooden steering wheel, either.

These cars are sometimes passed down families in the hope of future generations enjoying the happiness experienced by owners who proudly piloted their machines for the thrill of it, rather than just for getting from A to B. Removing the infotainment and lanekeeping gives drivers the satisfaction that comes with a perfect gear change and a corner well-handled. Without recourse to sat-nav, motorists gain a sense of adventure from that other lost art – map-reading.

Old cars are objectively “worse” than their descendants in almost every measurable way, but their relative simplicity makes that personal connection all the more profound. And as the crafty cigarette behind the school bike-sheds taught us, there are few greater pleasures than the mildly illicit. Who could have predicted your gran’s Morris Minor would prove just as delightfully naughty?