Hands up who's a soft cog

Indeed, if Sumerian inscriptions lamenting the behaviour of young men in their chariots have been correctly deciphered it was ever thus. At least those hot blooded proto-Iraqi lads could handle horsepower without the aid of an automatic transmission.

While not of the fundamentalist cabal that demands learners master a manual, surely there must be a point at which ticking the auto option renders you by definition unfit to drive vehicles of a certain sort. I refer to the sensational Toyota 86.

The six speed auto is entirely a decent thing, but cannot diminish the sense that the main event comes Monday when the entry level manual becomes available to Carsguide. For this is a sports car in the vein of the similarly diminutive, lightweight rear drive MX-5 another car that while amusing in auto guise feels akin to being massaged while wearing a driz-a-bone.

Satisfyingly the MX-5 remains almost unique in that autos are in the distinct minority. Surely this would be the case with the 86. Not, it seems, if the buyer is of today's pampered and dissolute youth.

According to the young enthusiast in the pod adjacent, his three mates to join the queue have all shamelessly stipulated slushers. The shifting paddle function, they are apparently convinced, is quite enough manual interfacing. If they can be bothered lifting a finger.

At moments like these that one begins to wonder if the reactionaries at whom one used to sneer didn't have a point when they demanded compulsory military service for under 20s. Or perhaps forcibly brand their social media sites with “soft cog''.