Older the better

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Trying to get close to what looked like an old Jaguar, all the better to work out whether it was indeed an old Jaguar, or something that merely looked like an old Jaguar, I did not notice the approaching speed bump. When the car I was following too closely braked for it, I very nearly drove through the back of it.

There was a godawful squealing of brakes and swear words, and the gut wrenching slow motion slide, semingly inexorable, towards the car in front's back bumper.

Somehow, physics bailed me out. I missed by millimetres. Near misses, or accidents of this kind must be an occupational hazard when you're driving elegant antiques around.

Alain, who is bald and says he made his money in computer software, breaks off feasting on garlic prawns to nod enthusiastically at this. He is driving an old Ferrari. "For sure, it happens all the time," he says.

Beautiful cars are like beautiful (he says the word ‘bee-yoo-teefal') women. All the men want to look. Sometimes it is very dangerous. It is ok to look, sure, but like many things in life, it is better to look but not touch." He laughs uproarioulsy at this. And so, too, does his companion. She looks rather younger than he.

Alain and I talk for a while about the shape of modern cars. "Where is the beauty today?" he asks me. "For sure, there are some beautiful modern cars on the road, I am talking about some Jaguars and some Aston Martins. But what has happened to affordable beauty? Why is the middle class man not allowed to drive something that is beautiful? You look at the cars around you sometimes, and it is so depressing.

They look like vacuumn moulds. No imagination. No style. Look at that," he says, pointing at a Triumph Stag, or possibly at a cluster of Austin Healeys, "it is something special, no? It is an attempt at beauty. A successful one, no? But that was an affordable car in its day. Nearly everyone could have one.

Today, you are either a millionaire to drive something beautiful and modern, or you have to make do with what the English call a hair dresser's car. Not everything about modern life is better. It is sad." Here, Alain makes a face to indicate that he is sad in his beautiful antique Ferrari. Sad for the little guy.

Tomorrow, Alain and the others will drive 200km or so to Al Ain, where they will drive up Jebel Hafeet, the snaking road to the highest point in the UAE. Old cars often overheat on steep climbs in the sun. One wonders if, should that happen to Alain, he will apologise to modernity. Or long for a, say, Ford Mondeo, reliable to the last. I suspect not.

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