If the motor car were invented today, there is absolutely no way that any government in the world would let normal members of the public drive one. They’d argue it’d be too dangerous, too complicated and suitable only for presidents and members of the armed forces.

Happily, however, it was born at a time when the world hadn’t got round to muddling up liberty with freedom. And as a result, it’s become jolly popular. Today the world is groaning under the weight of 600m vehicles. And Japan alone is adding to that number at the rate of 22,000 a day. That is unsustainable growth.

It’s always hard to predict the future, but in our lifetime – unless you are shot prematurely – there will be only four motor manufacturers. One in America, one in Europe, and a couple in the Far East. And none will be making anything we would recognise as “a car”.

The notion of travelling with the wind in your hair down a country road at 100mph, with petrol providing the firepower and four big exhausts producing the soundtrack, will be an image every bit as outdated as diphtheria.

I have no doubt, for instance, that the speed-kills lobby will eventually win its argument. Dead babies trump 400bhp every time. So all cars will be fitted with a satellite-monitored electronic overlord that will physically prevent you from ever breaking the limit. I’m also confident that the steering wheel will be removed. Already Mercedes has technology that will apply the brakes whenever it’s necessary. The only thing that’s stopping them from fitting it is legislation; the same legislation that insists on two pilots in the cockpit on many commercial flights where only one is needed to actually fly the plane. Even though 80% of all plane crashes are caused by pilot error.

The upshot, then, is that you won’t actually drive your car. You will merely climb in, tell it where you want to go and sit back as it takes you there. Think Will Smith in I, Robot.

All this is certain. And anyone who begs to differ may as well sit on the beach in a robe telling the sea to go away.

Another thing that’s beyond doubt is that you won’t be driving round in a hybrid, such as the Toyota Prius. These use just as much fuel as normal cars and are designed only to assuage the guilt of people whose opinions come from a man so hopeless he couldn’t even beat George Bush to the White House.

You will not have an electric car either. As the G-Wiz proves, They. Do. Not. Work. They run out of juice whenever it’s raining, or dry, or windy. And to charge them up again you have to plug them into a socket that is fed by . . . a power station. Yippee.

No. According to the eggheads, your car will almost certainly be powered by hydrogen. The most abundant gas in the universe. And something that, when burnt, produces nothing but water.

This raises an interesting question. If we’re so worried about melting ice caps and rising sea levels, what’s the world going to look like when 600m motor vehicles start to chuck water out of their tail-pipes? A point only I seem to have spotted thus far. Which means it’s probably irrelevant.

It is possible to use hydrogen in an engine instead of petrol or diesel. Using current technology, you lose about a fifth of the power, and that sounds bad. But come on. To be just 20% behind petrol, which has been fuelling engines for more than a hundred years . . . that’s not a bad starting point.

Except I don’t think it will be the starting point. I think that, soon, the holy grail will be cracked: the hydrogen fuel cell.

Think of it as a battery that is constantly charged by feeding it with hydrogen and oxygen. No, really. You mix them together and all you get in return is pure drinking water, and electricity. Which is then used to power your car, soundlessly, and for ever.

It all sounds like some kind of Monbiotic wet dream but the big players are close now. Close to making the dream of a world without oil a reality.

And please don’t imagine that you’ll have to tootle about in a road-going version of the Hindenburg, exploding in a Nagasaki-style fireball every time you drive under a pylon. The fact is that the best way of storing hydrogen is between the atoms in metal. Already some scientists reckon they have gone one better and have worked out a way of putting 30 litres in a single gram of graphite. And 30 litres would be enough to take a family saloon of the future 5,000 miles. So there we are. Problem solved. Personal transportation will survive. What will die, however, is the notion that “the car” symbolises personal freedom. As you sit there, being “driven” home, at a speed preordained by the government and on a route chosen by Nasa, you will have no control.

The device, the tool, the machine will be no more an extension of your hands and feet than a tumble dryer. It’ll be no more exhilarating than a vacuum cleaner. So yes, while the world will be cleaner and quieter, it’ll be like drowning in ditchwater.

So let’s cheer ourselves up this morning with the fearsome Ascari A10. Normally I avoid road testing cars made by small British companies because no one’s going to buy one anyway. So all I’m doing by saying it’s rubbish is giving the owner someone to blame when the bailiffs come round.

And they are, always, rubbish; hideous carbon fibre and magnesium reminders of what cars used to be like before we got robots to build them.

That’s the thing, you see. The man who started the company can’t afford a robot or a proper factory. So he makes the cars on a soulless out-of-town industrial estate, by hand. And saying a car is a handmade is just another way of saying the door will fall off.

A car made by a small British company won’t have been hot-weather tested in Arizona or subjected to trial by ice in Finland. Chances are, it won’t have been tested at all. And so it goes with the Ascari. I bet that if you bought one it’d be a constant trial.

However, some things are worth a bit of extra effort. And this is one of them. With a tweaked version of BMW’s old M5 engine sitting in the middle of the carbon fibre tub, you have the power of 600 horses in a car that weighs about the same as a sausage dog.

The result is epic. You put your foot on the accelerator and then you become somewhere else. This is hypercar fast. Koenigsegg fast. It really is a tankbuster.

Naturally the sequential gearbox needed to transfer all this power to the rear wheels is substantial. Even the lever is huge, like something from the bridge of a 1960s cargo ship. It’s noisy, too, so noisy that you can hear it whining and clunking above the sound of the four Alpine tunnels masquerading as exhausts. This is a car that makes you just fizz with excitement.

Sitting in the cockpit, hemmed in by strengthening beams and assaulted by the noise, gives you a sense of what it might have been like to be in the engine room of a second world war submarine that was being depth-charged.

But it isn’t all brute-force barnyard technology. It has quite the best steering of any car I’ve ever driven. Perfectly weighted. Perfectly linear in its response. All car makers should be forced, by law, to drive an A10 so they can see what they’re aiming for.

My favourite part, though, is the way it looks. It manages to be pretty and muscular at the same time. Combining the appeal of Kate Moss and the Terminator is a trick no other supercar designer has managed before. Of course, it’s not very cheap. It costs £350,000 and for that you don’t even get a radio. Not that you could hear it anyway.

The A10 is daft, for sure, and not at all relevant in the modern world. It consumes oil and smashes up its environment. But elephants do that as well; they destroy their habitat and drive themselves to extinction. And I bet you’ll be sad when they die out.

Vital statistics

Model Ascari A10

Engine 4941cc, eight cylinders

Power 625bhp @ 7500rpm

Torque 413 lb ft @ 5500rpm

Transmission Six-speed manual and paddle-shift

Fuel n/a

CO2 n/a

Acceleration 0-60mph: 2.8sec

Top speed 215mph Price £350,000

Verdict Destined for motoring history

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