The 1.3-litre engine is purring away sweetly, too. Comparable cars produced today tend to have smaller displacements, and often fewer cylinders, but I’m happy with this energetic straight four.

The Favorit lacks a rev counter but I'm sure that the engine is spinning at a more leisurely pace than a modern 1.0-litre would be at these sorts of speeds. And I'm certainly not driving the Skoda sympathetically – I'm overtaking lorries and cars quite contentedly, and only need to drop a gear when trying to pass vehicles going uphill.

I stop for fuel in Maastricht and flick through the atlas, planning to drive via Frankfurt to Nuremburg, and then look for a sign to Prague. From the boot I also retrieve my stash of ten cassette tapes, bought for £2 from a charity shop in Canterbury the previous afternoon. I brim the tank, noting the original fuel advice on the filler cap, and return to the autoroute, this time accompanied by Paul Simon. Without any working phones, I'm cocooned in the year 1991.