Having collected it off the train in London I set off somewhat cautiously to find a suitable road to try out its paces. This turned out to be the A120 going northwards through Epping Forest and virtually empty. The car accelerated easily up a slight gradient to about 110 mph, with power clearly in hand, which seemed good enough at the time. The test at an end, I pulled in at the Wake’s Arms at Loughton, and almost immediately another car drew up at my side. This was an astonishing Mercedes of a kind I had never seen before. Out of it stepped a smiling and immaculate young Chinese who introduced himself as Loke Wan Tho. Loke wanted a close look at the battle-worn Alfa. Encircling it, excitement leaked from him like an electric current. ‘Oh, absolutely!’ he said. ‘How absolutely!’ It was a form of commendation lifted from P. G. Wodehouse, then reaching the end of a long vogue. For fifteen years young men of the upper classes, foreigners in this country in particular, tried to talk like Bertie Wooster.
