Last week we were on holiday on the BMW R 1250 RT LE driving through Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium when we got a call from Group 1 Ford telling us that our car hadn’t actually been reserved!

That was the bad news.

The good news was that they could get hold of one with the same specification but with the Driver Assist Pack (Driver Alert, Traffic Sign Recognition and Adaptive Cruise Control) as well, but they’d need to charge me a little extra towards it.

I was concerned that would take it over the £40,000 list price issue, but I was assured that that doesn’t include the first year’s VED figure, so with that taken off, it’s still under the £40k ceiling.

The other news is that it should arrive in August: good because it means we get it sooner, but bad because that means it’ll be a 24 plate rather than a 74 plate.

So we went ahead and agreed over the telephone (confirmed by email the next day).