Is there anything more satisfying than using your rather old car to rescue a much newer one? If you have a Land Rover, especially a proper old ‘Meccano’ one, such a scenario tends to happen from time to time.

The latest occurred last Saturday night. I got a call from our neighbour at 9.30pm asking for a tow. Her hubbie had broken down on a major A-road with no real hard shoulder, and the articulated lorries were getting ever closer.

I was happy to oblige, so I grabbed a tow rope and the keys to the Series 3 and headed out into the night. I found him quite easily, and when the coast was clear did a U-turn and reversed back to hook up his 2008 Ford Focus to my old heap.

He didn’t want the ‘all the way home’ premium service, instead preferring the much cheaper and more basic ‘off the A-road rescue’, which turned out to be a McDonald’s car park. There are no pictures of this drama because it was middle-of-the-country dark. It did, however, restore my faith in the young drivers of today, who offered help with some start spray as they chomped on burgers, which was nice.

As it turned out, the petrol Focus fired up, but did nothing else. There was no power steering and no forward motion at all. So I got the husband (plus luggage) home and everyone was happy.

A few days later I found out why the Focus failed to proceed: it was a fuse. It took the garage some time to find the problem, but a fuse it was. Modern cars are clearly rubbish.

Oddly, the Land Rover has an issue of its own: the choke cable broke a while back. I have been meaning to order a replacement. I took the cover off the steering column and looked at what I had to do, then did nothing.

For a while I used a Monkey wrench to act as a surrogate means of getting more fuel into the carbs, but with the warmer weather you can do without the choke pretty quickly. That’s the beauty of old cars: they still work when modern ones wouldn’t.

So I need to know if your old car has helped out a younger one and whether you think new cars are just far too complicated for their own good.