Arrived in the car park this morning, fresh from a weekend that contained one fantastic driving day, at least, to find this eclectic quartet of cars awaiting our attention this week. In the blink of an eye, it was a reminder of the simple appeal of all cars - fast and slow, traditional and modern, old and new, expensive and very, very cheap.

The Morgan Plus 8 is Mr Holder’s long-termer, back with us just in time for spring. Morgan took it back before Christmas for a couple of works events at Malvern Link (demonstrators aren’t plentiful in a small company) but now it’s back just as the weather improves. 

Impatient Autocar drivers have already begun queuing for the experience of hearing that V8 burble, curling up over its short and shapely rear panel. 

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Next to the Mog is our Renault Zoe, so silent and refined that it’s like the baby limo the industry has never built until now. Its one Achilles heel is charging; while we wait for a new kind of charging point to be hung on the office wall we have to top it up at the local Waitrose. 

But it’s a handy and appealing car, just the same. That’s Allan Muir’s Renault Twizy in the background, by the way, about to go to a new owner when Renault comes to pick it up at the end of the week, something that he’s not very happy about.

Next in line is our Toyota Auris Hybrid, also heading for new ownership, having accumulated 18,000 miles in the hands of deputy editor Matt Burt, during which time it has averaged a deeply impressive mpg.

It made the perfect city runabout for him when he lived in The Smoke; now he’s a 40-mile motorway commute away so one of the latest turbodiesels might make slightly better sense in terms of long-distance economy. Word has it, though, that he has designs on a real fire-breather.

Last in line is our “new” 2001 VW Golf TDI, already with 507,000 miles on the clock, which has some interesting adventures planned for the next few weeks. First off, we intend to road test it, just as would have happened to one of its ancestors around 13 years ago. Following that, a road rally has been mentioned. And that’s just the beginning...