When it comes to motoring, the British love something quirky that makes them stand out from the crowd.

Three wheeler cars are a case in point. Indeed, since the dawn of motoring history it seems we have been intent on driving objects with a wheel missing.

But what is the point? Do they perform better? Are they safer? Are they aesthetically more pleasing? The answer to all these questions is no.

In fact one of the few advantages to having three wheels instead of four seems to be that you use fewer tyres. And you will have a perfect opportunity to examine them when your car rolls on to its roof on a minor bend.

And, thanks to another quirk in motoring regulations, cars such as the Reliant Robin were classified as motorcycles when it came to taxing them so owners saved a few quid in the face of ridicule from their friends, family, neighbours and total strangers in the street.

It seems the reason we like three-wheelers is that they are a joke and one which has lasted for decades.

But then the drivers seem so serious. The Robin always seemed to be driven by some old bloke with a flat cap and his equally sour-faced wife in the passenger seat.

Neither of them were equipped with a crash helmet which would be standard attire for me if someone gave me a lift.

Yet the Robin was perhaps the most successful of all three-wheelers Somehow in the late 1970s and 1980s it was the thing to do for some people to trundle around in an unstable piece of plastic that was about as safe as a canoe in a tsunami.

Sporty types at the time would kit their cars with green sun visor strips, presumably to mask the fact they were driving a total embarrassment.

No doubt they also put stickers like “My other car is a Porsche!” on the back. Ha! Ha!

There were even Reliant Robin races where cars would often overturn. Drivers would right themselves from inside the car by rocking it and pushing down on the track through the window.

In 1999 the Robin died and despite a brief attempt to revive it by a plastics firm, fortunately it never came back to life.

Let’s hope the old joke never returns to haunt us.