I still remember the excitement in my dad’s voice. It was the early 1970’s and he was telling me you could now buy a new car “off the floor”.

You see, until that moment, you could wander into a car showroom – which usually only had a couple of cars inside – and check out the car of your dreams. But you couldn’t drive it away, even if you wanted to and could afford to. Import restrictions and the modus operandi of the day saw to it that things wouldn’t happen that quickly.

So you had to order it, and wait. Sometimes for months.